Conversations and Reckonings
by Spikey44
Summary: A continuation of the 'Conversations Arc': four years since the twins birth and old demons and past allegiances come back to haunt Balthier but this time they threaten not just his life but that of his and Ashe's young dynasty. Is this the end of the line
1. Chapter 1

**Conversations and Reckonings**

_Disclaimer: all known and recognisable characters, place names etc. are the property of Square Enix, all unknown and unrecognisable characters, places etc. are mine. I make no money from this endeavour of fiction. _

_A/N: Hello…..if you've read this 'conversations' series before, welcome back…if you haven't…this might not make much sense, but as a brief recap here goes, through a series of misadventures Balthier and Ashe came to be married and produced twins, Halina Amalia and Heios Demen Dalmasca…….unfortunately there is no such thing as a happy ending for this dysfunctional family!_

* * *

**Prologue: Thief in the Keep; your Gil or your life**

She crept through the fortress Keep of Nalbina like a ghost in silver slippers with a surety of purpose that was both single-minded and complete. In her hand she clutched a looped coil of rope pilfered from the soldiers barracks.

Reaching her intended goal she pressed up against the wall near the half open door and peeked around the corner to peer into the room beyond. Her heart pounded like a heavy bell in the cage of her ribs.

The diffuse yellow light of the shaded crystal lamp quivered and faded as a shadow moved across the half open door. Immediately she pulled back in fright and held her breath.

Through the crack in the door she watched the tall, lean man pause before the small window in the circle tower room. He held a sheaf of papers before his face and she watched him mutter softly to himself and rub a hand over his eyes tiredly before pulling on a slender pair of half-spectacles that hung from a chain around his neck.

She savagely bit down on her lip in anticipation; her target in her sights, the moment to spring almost upon her.

She watched the man groan in annoyance over something or other and irritably toss the papers down on the desk by the window before turning fully around to face the door, arms stretched above his head and elbows bent as he yawned.

She tried to duck away from the door but it was too late he saw her immediately. She watched his eyes widen fractionally as he espied her and then his mouth curl up in a slight smile, lips parting to speak.

She did not give him the chance to speak, however and instead pushed open the door with all her strength leapt into the threshold, brandishing her stolen rope and the wooden training sword she had 'borrowed' from her brother and yelled at the top of her lungs:

'Your Gil or your life, this is a raid!'

The man before her simply looked at her, the smile playing about his lips, 'I see,' he murmured dryly, 'You are aware, young lady, that this is far past your bedtime?'

Sensing that she was fast losing the advantage of surprise her careful sneaking had afforded her Halina (Hallie) Amalia Dalmasca, crown Princess of the Kingdom of Dalmasca-Nabradia, drew in a big breath of air, puffed out her chest and rested her clenched fists against her hips in her best approximation of a classic pirate stance.

'A sky pirate does not have a bedtime; I laugh in the face of bedtime.'

The man before her, who was in fact the single most important man in Hallie's life, fought valiantly to keep from laughing as he removed the half-spectacles from his long, sharp nose (which he had bequeathed to Hallie and her twin brother Heios) and strolled over to the book case set into the wall behind the desk.

'Very well, young lady, how much Gil will it set me back to see you safe abed, hmm?'

Hallie padded into the room and over to her father while she gave this question the serious consideration it deserved. 'Well for starters a bedtime story and not the one about Raithwall, I find that boring – tell me about the time you hi-jacked the Rozzarian Imperial cruiser over the Embolata Lake.'

Her father winced slightly, 'Yes that is a better story, unfortunately your mother is of the opinion that such stories are inappropriate for you and your brother to hear.'

Hallie considered this, ferreting out what her father was saying and what he wasn't saying on the off chance she could still get what she wanted (this was the sort of thing sky pirates did, after all, mother was often accusing father of being manipulative and saying one thing while meaning another).

'Yes, but mother is not here, father, and she only said that because Heios became upset and had bad dreams. I won't have bad dreams.'

Her father ran one faintly burn-scarred hand over the spines of the books, 'Yes, that's part of the problem.' He murmured amusedly reaching down with his free hand to stroke her hair. Hallie moved closer to her father's side, although tall for her four years, her head barely reached her father's mid thigh.

'So, we have reached an impasse on the first of your demands, Princess sky pirate, do you have a counter proposal?'

Hallie nodded vigorously, 'What were you doing before I ambushed you, father?'

A sky pirate always had more than one reason for doing anything, the treasure of a story mother would not like father telling was only one possible boon, discovering what father was up to with all those pieces of paper and stylus and odds and ends on his desk was much more valuable.

Her father shook his head distractedly, 'Nothing productive, unfortunately, banging my head against a metaphorical brick wall, I dare say.'

Her father dropped dilatorily into his large, leather upholstered wing-back chair that always reminded Hallie of a dark eagle with wings curving up and around to enfold her father.

'Up you come, young lady, as you are here you may as well help your father think, as I seem incapable of doing so sensibly unaided.'

Hallie grinned and, discarding the rope and toy sword she had no need for, and clambered up into her father's lap. She kicked her legs contentedly and inhaled the familiar, much loved, scent of her father. He always smelled of starched white cotton, glossair oil, books and ink. As far as Hallie was concerned it was the scent of happiness.

For a little while Hallie was content to simply snuggle her head against her father's chest and listen to him breathing and the ticking of the collection of carriage clocks counting down time on the mantle above the fire place.

Her father stroked his fingers through her short, feathery, ashy hair. Looking up into his face above her Hallie observed the distraction of his thoughts, the crease of his brows almost meeting over the bridge of his nose. With his free hand her father tapped out a disparate medley on the arm of the chair with his long fingers.

Hallie decided that while she may not have gained a 'bad' story from her father about his adventures in that strange and unfathomable time that existed before Hallie had been born, before her father was _her_ father, she had at least won for herself a perfect moment, just her and her father in his 'special' study.

After an unknown amount of time, when the soft peacefulness of the ticking clocks and her father's steady breathing had almost lulled her to sleep, Hallie was stirred by her father rousing himself in the chair.

'Come now, young lady, your mother will have my hide if she finds out I've let you stay up long past your bedtime. Apparently she is tired of always taking the role of disciplinarian while I spoil you both rotten.'

Hallie did not offer any protest when her father arranged her arms around his neck and lifted her up to carry her out of the study and back through the keep to the tower where Heios slept and her own room remained empty, her bed unused.

'I am quite happy if you want to keep spoiling me rotten father, I'm sure Heios doesn't mind either.' She mumbled sleepily.

'Oh, no doubt,' Her father agreed, laughter a rich undercurrent in his voice, 'but your mother is not, and one petulant royal with a natural inclination to expect everything her own way, is more than enough for one man to handle.'

Hallie tried to puzzle out what he meant by this. Her tutors were always saying how very advanced she and Heios were in their studies, especially for their tender years, but sometimes the words, actions, and manners of adults remained a closed book to Hallie, a book written in a language she did not understand and sealed with a magick key.

Held securely in her father's capable arms, her head lolling contentedly against his shoulder, Hallie absently reached out to touch the dangling pearl-drop that hung from her father's torn right ear.

Her father sighed but did not bother at this late hour to tell Hallie to leave his ear alone and instead simply continued through the quiet keep; down one spiral staircase and one dim-lit, tapestry draped, corridor and up another spiral stair.

They were almost back to the tower wing of the Nalbina Keep that served as she and her brother's private demesne when her father drew to a halt and, muscles tensing, lowered Hallie to the ground, eyes narrowed and searching the shadows for something Hallie could not see.

Without a word her father crouched before a sleepy Hallie (and in the guise of the action pulled free a large hunting knife from his boot). Before Hallie could do more than rub at her sleep heavy eyes with a balled fist, her father pressed one finger (the tip of which was slightly stained with ink) against her lips. Her father's dark eyes burned in to hers, warning her without words to remain still and silent.

Gesturing for her to wait quietly beside a suit of armour mounted against the wall and with her back pressed against a grand tapestry in cloth of silver and azure blue depicting the battle of Bur-Omisace wherein in her mother led an army of thirteen thousand ordinary men and women against the wicked Mishman Margrace, her father walked silently and swiftly around the corner and disappeared into the shadows beyond.

Seconds ticked by in which time Hallie bit her lip until it bled and wished that she had not left her brother's toy sword in the study with the rope and all her father's papers.

Where was father?

Was something wrong; what about Heios and Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty?

Hallie found her heart was hammering now for completely different reasons that it had when she had crouched before her father's study door waiting to pounce. Tears prickled her eyes and Hallie sniffed hard then cringed when it seemed to her that the sound was far too loud.

'Father?'

Poking her head around the legs of the huge coat of arms, Hallie whispered into the darkness of the Keep, which had seemed so comforting before and was now anything but.

She jumped when she thought she heard a noise, the sound of cloth scraping against the polished stone of the keep floor. She thought she heard a sharp indrawn breath and before she knew it Hallie had dashed from her hiding place and was halfway down the corridor, tears flying from her eyes.

'Father?'

Eyes blinded by tears of panic and shaking in the cold draught from the old masonry of the Keep that the tapestries did not quite prevent from whistling through the corridors, Hallie skidded to a halt abruptly.

'Hallie, go back,' her father snapped off the words, sharp and fierce, 'get up to the tower and wake Nanny Sorbet, bring her here. Go now.'

But Hallie barely heard her father. All her attention was taken up by the sight before her. Her father, white faced, hard eyed, crouched beside, and half supporting, the body of a woman Hallie knew very well indeed. A woman whose long white, gently curling, hair pooled on the floor of the corridor, the ends soaking up the liquid crimson that distilled on the floor and poured from the huge, red, open maw that had been gouged from her stomach.

Hallie could feel her lips trembling and her eyes growing impossibly wide as she stared from the horrible, bloody wound to her father. She hiccupped a sharp, shallow breath and reached out with trembling fingers towards the blood flecked, placid face of the woman bleeding all over her father's nice white shirt.

'Fran!'

Her father reached out with a blood slicked hand and slapped Hallie's reaching hand away before she could touch the wound. Hallie leapt back, startled by the sting of her father's hand that she had never felt before, fresh tears fell as her father, teeth gritted, picked up Fran's limp form in his arms and fixed Hallie with a quelling gaze.

'Hurry, quick; up the stairs to Nanny Sorbet.'

Hallie whimpered, as she caught sight behind her father of the trails of blood splotches and the kicked open door that was the real cause of the stiff breeze rushing through this corridor. She saw one of the many tapestries had been pulled from the wall and shredded as if by sharp claws, and noted that trails and tatters of brightly coloured cloth still adhered to Fran's long clawed hands.

'Father what happened?' Hallie whispered as she clasped hold of her father's belt to keep in pace with him as they dashed up the small flight of stairs that led to the door to the nursery where she and Heios, slept, played and took their lessons.

Her father shouldered open the door and gestured led the way into the room, calling for Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty (Nanny Sorbet's daughter, deputy nanny and nursemaid to the royal children) rousing them from sleep.

'Master Balthier – kupo, but has happened?' Nanny Sorbet exclaimed as she leapt up on to the large desk her father had swept clear with one arm was now laying Fran down on.

'I don't know. I found her like this and she was already next to dead; can you do anything? My magick does not appear to be helping.'

Hallie huddled back into the corner of the play room, pressing herself in against the giant soft stuffed toy behemoth that was larger than she was and the wall. She did not know if she was still crying as she nibbled her lips and sniffed.

She did not even realise it when she wet herself for sheer fright.

She watched as her father used his big knife to carefully cut away the scraps of leather that was all that was left of Fran's clothing so that Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty could get at the wound with spells and cleaning cloths.

Heios poked his head out of his room and padded quietly over to Hallie still dressed in his night clothes.

He did not say anything but his dark brown eyes were very wide as he looked over to the table and saw their father lean over Fran (who to the twins was much more than a mere paltry aunt could be, or just a friend of their father, but a wonderful, magickal woman, bringer of gifts and excitement, who they both loved immensely).

Neither Hallie nor Heios knew what their father did when he leaned over Fran and seemed to be breathing into her mouth, except that it must denote something terrible and horrible had happened to Fran that she would lie so still and permit such a thing to happen.

Heios took hold of Hallie's hands and squeezed them very tightly. Hallie shuddered as she sucked in a shaky breath of pure fear.

'Damn you Fran, don't you dare die on me,' their father's voice, furious and torn with grief, made them both flinch and Hallie almost groaned with a purity of terror that she had never felt before.

Both children watched as magicks crackled and swirled, cast by both Moogles and even their father whose distain for magick was well known to both Hallie and Heios. There was a moment of fraught silence broken only by the hiccupping pleading of two very young children.

'Please, Fran, please Fran, please don't die.'

The woman on the desk spine bowed, her head tipping back and her body lifting from the desk as the magick's took affect and she seemingly came back from the dead. Their father caught Fran's body in his arms and carefully lowered her down onto the desk.

Hallie and Heios, pulled forward by the palpable magnetism of their father's distress, hurried towards the table and clustered against him.

Almost unconsciously her father reached out with his shaking free hand not cupping Fran's head, resting it briefly upon Hallie's head inadvertently streaking her silky cap of ash pale hair with Fran's blood as he caressed her.

Fran's red eyes were open and they rolled up to meet Hallie's father's worried gaze, she reached limply towards him with one hand as Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty began treating and binding the magickally sealed wound to her stomach.

'…….Balthier, Balfonheim, a warning I bring…..calamity befalls and the port burns…..the Phoenix rises from the ashes…..you know to where it flies.'

Hallie, pressed so tightly against her father's leg that the soft, chubby skin of her cheek was indented with the seam of his trousers, jumped in shock to hear the harsh crashing oath that her father released to rend the air.

'Gods damn it – they've done it then, the pirates have gone to war.'


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter one: Slowly, slowly the webs and cages of fate are revealed**

Hallie sucked her fingers, index and middle finger, no one knew why or precisely when she commenced this unfortunate habit but her mother was forever trying to get her to stop (father was less concerned; though he would on occasion pull her fingers from her mouth and offer her a boiled candy to suck on instead – mother didn't like this much either).

Hallie was sucking on her fingers right now, sitting in her huge canopy bed in her bedroom in the Palace of Rabanastre and flatly, stolidly, refusing to go to sleep.

'Come now poppet you've had an exciting, trying time of it, growing girls need their rest, kupo.'

'No. And I am not a girl, I am a Princess.' Hallie sniffed haughtily and slobbering somewhat around her fingers still inserted in her mouth. On balance Hallie would sooner be a pirate than a princess but she was not above using her status as leverage when she could.

Nanny Sorbet was unimpressed however.

'All the more reason to get your rest, my poppet,' The Moogle tried to pull the counterpane of the bed sheets up over Hallie's cross legged form to encourage her. Hallie shoved the bed sheets away from her.

'I want to see Father.'

After her father, Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty had managed to make Fran almost well again father had sounded a full alarm and ordered the nursery packed up, so that they could all return to Rabanastre.

Hallie had wanted to stay at her father's side as he rushed off to prepare the Strahl for take-off and ensured Fran was safe inside, placing her on the shelf bed in the main cabin, however Nanny Sorbet had noticed the unfortunate accident Hallie had had and insisted she wash and change clothes while Heios helped Minty pack up their clothes, toys and books ready to go home.

Hallie usually enjoyed flights in the Strahl immensely (as did Heios, though as usual, he didn't say much) this time however father did not let either Hallie or her brother sit up front in his lap so they could help steer, or share the navigators chair and look out of the windows at the clouds scudding by.

Instead father flew fast and low towards Rabanastre with Hallie and Heios strapped into passenger chairs minded by Sister Minty while Nanny Sorbet saw to Fran. Nono tried to cheer both Hallie and her brother up throughout the journey but Hallie would not be diverted – she longed for her father to turn to her, gather her up in his arms, and tell her everything was 'perfectly fine'.

Father did not say that. He did not even seem to know that Hallie and her brother were there as he landed the Strahl outside the palace and dashed through the cabin to where Fran was.

In the end it was Captain Vaan who came to fetch Hallie and Heios and it was Vaan (the best Captain in all Ivalice in Hallie's less than humble opinion) who lifted her up onto his shoulders and carried her piggy-back into the palace.

Vaan told her everything was going to be fine; but it wasn't the same. Hallie wanted her father to tell her and until he did, until she could see for herself that everything was as it should be once more, she would not sleep. No matter how tired she was.

At that moment the door to her bedroom opened; Hallie's breath caught in hope but it wasn't her father's golden brown head that poked around the door. Instead it was Heios, in his sleepwear and carrying one of his big books, who slipped in through the door and padded silently over to the bed. Hallie deflated with desperate disappointment.

'Master Heios you should be abed, kupo.' Nanny Sorbet admonished as Heios climbed up into Hallie's large, heavily frilled bed. 'Don't tell me you are going to be naughty like your sister.'

Heios, serious, precocious, quiet Heios, looked steadily at their Nanny, 'I am abed,' he patted Hallie's bed to prove the point, 'And I have had enough sleep. I was sleeping when father came to the playroom with Fran; it is Hallie who needs to sleep.'

Hallie narrowed her eyes at her brother's betrayal and he simply looked calmly back at her with his cool brown eyes. 'Stupidhead; go away Heios, this is my room.'

Hallie tried to shove her brother out of the bed but he proved surprisingly immovable. Instead of retaliating he simply waited until Hallie gave up and folded her arms across her chest in sulky defeat.

Nanny Sorbet watched all this with a shake of her head, standing on the foot of Hallie's bed with her wings twitching to help maintain balance.

'Behave children; your lady mother will be upset to learn how you are carrying on so, kupo.' She chided softly.

'I have brought a story book, Nanny, perhaps you will read to us?' Heios held out the big book to their Moogle Nanny. The book was almost the same size as Sorbet and Heios considerately opened it up across the bed as their Nanny stepped up to read.

Hallie looked at the pretty pictures and decorative borders of the story book and groaned as she recognised what it was, 'Not Raithwall again; Heios that story is so boring.'

Heios smiled briefly, which was rare for the solemn, introspective child, 'I know, that's why I thought it would be a good choice. It will put us both to sleep.'

Hallie giggled slightly and Heios joined her. The royal twins, although sharing many of the same features, did not look over much alike and could not be more different in temperament.

Hallie was a rambunctious, boisterous and confident little madam, with a cap of flyaway ash blonde hair and honey-brown eyes. Everyone said that she was, in looks and character, the very image of her mother, except that Hallie was altogether taller and rangier in build.

Heios, by contrast, was a slender, reedy boy with an introverted and quiet nature and surprisingly dark, sharp features. Heios rarely said anything and usually had his nose stuck in a book. No one ever commented on the likeness, because there were few still alive to remember, but Heios was cut from the very cloth that had made the young Ffamran Mid Bunansa.

Still the children were twins and despite their differences were the very best of playmates (when Hallie was able to entice her brother to go on an adventure with her that was, or when Heios was able to persuade Hallie to settle down to some nice quiet card game or such like).

Nanny Sorbet had just begun to read, in subtly sombre way, the venerated and ancient story of the first king of Dalmasca, and Hallie had just stifled the first of many yawns, when the door to Hallie's bedroom opened once more.

'Mother!'

Both children exclaimed as the Queen of Dalmasca-Nabradia poked her head around the door, saw that both children were indeed still awake, and stepped fully into the room. She opened her arms in welcome as Hallie and Heios all but fell off the bed to throw themselves into her ready embrace.

'You should be sleeping,' their mother admonished with very little real rancour as she cupped Heios' face in one hand and curled an arm around Hallie's back, crouching down so she was exactly eye level with them both.

'We can't sleep mother; we are worried for Fran.' Heios told her seriously. Hallie nodded her head in vigorous agreement (while it was true that Hallie was very worried about Fran it was her father she was most distraught over).

Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca was frowning slightly, but then, in Hallie's opinion she usually was, and neither Hallie nor Heios saw anything wrong with that. Their mother was a queen and queen's had important, weighty, things to think about (another reason Hallie would sooner be a pirate). Their mother pursed her lips tightly.

'I am sorry you had to see that, your father should have known better than to inflict such a sight on you both. You are too young to see something like that.'

'It wasn't father's fault.' Hallie immediately, instinctively, took up her father's cause, as she always did, even when she didn't understand what was going on, much like now.

Ashe smiled ruefully well aware that Hallie's devotion to her father was absolute, 'It might not have been his fault, precisely, but he still should have handled the situation better. But that has nothing to do with you, Hallie, or you Heios.' She added swiftly.

'Is Fran dead mother?'

Hallie turned sharply to her brother shocked by the calm way Heios asked that question. Without much thought she reached out and punched him in the arm.

'Stupid.' She hissed at him, Heios turned wounded eyes on her, uncomprehending as to why she had hit him. 'If you say it you make it true.' She hissed.

'Hallie,' her mother caught her fist and spoke sharply, 'what have I told you about hitting people? Now apologise to your brother.'

Hallie opened her mouth to protest the injustice of it all, but her mother's quelling look silenced her, 'Sorry Heios,' she grumbled ducking her head. Her mother sighed in mild annoyance at the less than sincere apology but did not dwell on it.

'No, Heios, Fran is very much still alive though she is hurt. Your father is with her now.'

'Can we see her?' Hallie asked while at the same time her brother demanded to know why she was still hurt if both father, Nanny Sorbet, Sister Minty and the palace healers had treated her with magick.

It was Hallie's opinion that although her brother might be at times intolerably boring, he made up for it by being clever.

Their mother's face fell, 'Heios, sometimes I dearly wish you were not so astute,' she murmured looking down at the patterning on the embroidered rug laid out over the wooden floor boards.

The children waited until their mother met their questioning gazes.

'Alright I'll tell you, but you must promise to be grown up and listen carefully to the answer, understood?'

Both children nodded solemnly. Ashe sighed regretting the decision she and Balthier had made to treat their children like intelligent beings instead of merely _children_. The advantage of having two staggeringly bright children was somewhat diminished by being unable to dissuade or distract them from asking, and expecting answers to, difficult questions.

Ashe finally decided on a suitable answer to the question and in a soft, careful, slow voice relayed the facts least painful to hear. She looked both her children in the eye as she told them, seriously, waiting to catch any sign that they were not ready or able to hear or comprehend.

'Fran was shot and the type of shot used in the gun that hurt her was made using something called 'Magicite' which absorbs and makes useless all types of magick. We have found and removed the bullet but to do that we had to cut Fran open and she lost a great deal of blood, do you understand?'

Hallie could feel her bottom lip tremble, she did not really understand what her mother meant, but her mind had latched onto the idea of Fran being 'cut open' and she could not help but remember how her father had sliced up Fran's clothing with his big knife to get at the wound in the playroom in Nalbina.

Had father used that knife to get the 'magicite' in Fran's stomach out too?

Ashe instantly recognised the dismay in Hallie and rubbed her arm, 'Fran is going to be well, sweeting, I promise. The Magicite has been removed and she is healing well now that the spells are taking.'

'But why did someone shoot Fran mother?' Heios demanded, scowling as he thought things through and looking shocking like his father as he did so. 'And what is a Phoenix?'

Ashe flinched slightly at the question and looked sharply at her son, 'Where did you hear that word, Heios?'

'From Fran mother, she said something to father before we left Nalbina about a Phoenix and ashes. We were standing right with father when she said it.' Heios gestured to himself and Hallie.

'Damn you Balthier, what were you thinking?' their mother cursed softly standing up in agitated fashion before turning softer eyes and voice to her children.

'Sometimes adults do unpleasant and unkind things, children, and there is no good reason and sometimes adults do things without knowing or considering the consequences of their actions and people dear to them pay the price. Both those causes are in effect in this mess.'

Ashe shook her head and clapped her hands, 'Now, enough, it is time for you both to go to sleep.'

'But father…' Hallie protested almost wailing, though in truth she was so tired she felt hot and sick and her eyes burned.

Ashe cupped the back of her daughter's head and guided her towards her bed, where Nanny Sorbet had dutifully pulled back the counterpane once more. Hallie did not resist as her mother tucked her in.

'Go to sleep, Halina, that is a command,' Ashe stated authoritatively, then she smiled and her voice softened, 'and I promise that I will personally order your father to be here to greet you as soon as you wake in the morn.'

Hallie allowed herself to be settled against her pillows and received a kiss from her mother onto her forehead in return for her goodnight kiss to her mother's cheek. She was much heartened by her mother's words. No one dared disobey a direct order from the Queen of Dalmasca, least of all father.

Hallie's eyelids were already drooping when she heard her mother leading Heios by the hand out of her room, while promising to read a little of the tale of Raithwall to him before he went to bed, and Nanny Sorbet turned out the crystal lamp in her room. She was asleep before the room was completely dark.

* * *

As soon as both her precious babes were safely and soundly asleep Ashe left the nursery and strode swiftly through the night time palace to the infirmary. The few loitering foreign envoys in the lower reaches of the palace wisely kept their distance as Ashe marched through her palace in something of a frightful temper.

She found the object of her wrath leaning against a window embrasure in the palace infirmary, eyes closed and face pale, however Ashe found herself surprisingly lacking in sympathy.

'You bloody stupid fool.'

Bridging the gap between the doorway of the infirmary and her target she stormed up to him and hissed her anger into his face. Tired brown eyes opened and looked down on her without obvious expression.

'Pardon?'

'How could you do this to our children; you have left them traumatised. How could you let them watch as Fran lay almost dying?' Ashe raged, Balthier frowned, readying himself for response. Ashe spoke before he had the chance.

'Heios asked me if Fran was dead and Hallie was obviously terrified, she would not sleep and Minty had to summon me to settle the children down.'

Balthier did not say anything in response to this, his jaw hard and his eyes harder. He still wore the blood stained clothes he had been wearing when he found Fran. The rich chocolate brown velvet of his vest and the white of his shirt had been spoiled irrevocably by the brilliant crimson, shading to russet brown, of Fran's drying blood upon him.

Ashe shook her head, trying not to lash out at him in a way that she hadn't done in years.

'They are only four years old, Balthier, they're just babies, and they now have the sight of a woman they dearly love bleeding from a gut shot all over their playroom to contend with. How could you be so stupid?'

Ashe watched as Balthier's expression went from one of incomprehension and growing annoyance to dawning realisation and then, gratifyingly, to quiet horror as he finally understood what he had forced his children to witness through a moment of almost unforgivable negligence.

'I did not think, Ashe,' Balthier spoke quietly, in quenched and bloodless voice as he rubbed a hand to his eyes and over his tired face.

'I sensed too great a cold draught coming from one of the ground floor corridors as I was taking Hallie to bed,' he murmured reliving the events of earlier that night, 'I set her down to investigate, thinking that no more was amiss than one of the stewards had not closed a door properly. Once I found Fran, collapsed on the floor, I daresay I thought of nothing but her.'

Their was guilt in this admission, guilt in acknowledging that for a brief span of time he had forgotten the existence of his own children, as his greatest friend bled almost to death in his arms.

Ashe let her breath out slowly and nodded, releasing her anger. Once upon a time she would have kept hold of the anger despite Balthier's admission of guilt and harangued him endlessly, more as a way to alleviate her own fears than any desire to make his life a misery.

Once upon a time Balthier would have walked out, harsh words left in his wake, rather than stand and take such abuse from her, and what was, really, a foolish mistake unlikely to be repeated, would become a bone of contention between them for days.

However they had not survived almost six years of marriage to each other without learning a few tricks and hard lessons along the way.

Still, Balthier was a little surprised by how lightly he seemed to have escaped this time, as the silence between them lessened from fraught tension to merely strained civility.

'That's it, is it?' he questioned, 'I was expecting at the very least a slap of some description.' He quirked an eyebrow insinuatingly, even at this bad time he could not resist a little gentle teasing at Ashe's expense.

Ashe settled herself on the padded bench of the window embrasure and rolled her eyes, 'Yelling at you, or exactly justified physical censure, would serve no purpose. I'll let Hallie do that in the morning, I have no fear she can slap as hard as I can.'

Balthier smiled thinly and closed his eyes as he settled on the wide bench beside Ashe, 'Was she particularly angry?' he asked dryly, 'I think our girl will grow to have a temper to rival your own eventually.'

'She has that already; your arrogance and my temper. We've produced a tyrant in the making.' Ashe rested her head against Balthier's shoulder and sighed.

'How is Fran?'

It was Balthier's turn to sigh as he slipped an arm around her waist in a vague squeeze.

'Stable. Though the journey on foot she took from her ship to the Keep and the effort she expended to gain entry did not help her situation. Had she sought aid somewhere closer to where she was hurt the prognosis would be better.'

Ashe turned to study his face in profile, six years of marriage and almost a decade's acquaintance and he had not lost any of the sharp leanness and quickness of expression that had first attracted her to him.

'Has she said anything about the attack, or why she came to you, risking bleeding to death to make the journey?'

'Not as such, but I know Fran; she would sooner die en-route to friendly territory than admit vulnerability and seek aid from strangers.'

'Basch says that Fran left Landis some weeks ago and he had nothing in the way of word of her; in fact he had been planning on asking you if you knew of her whereabouts and that was why he happened to be within Rabanastre at all.'

Balthier scowled, brows knitting tightly in thought. Ashe waited for him to speak, but kept a verbal prompt waiting on her tongue should he seek to evade answering.

'It all seems passing strange that Basch should happen to be in Rabanastre when it is well known I spend most of my time in Nalbina.'

Ashe almost laughed, 'Surely you are not suggesting Basch would have anything to do with this? He loves Fran no less than you.'

Balthier snorted derisively at this comment, he did not need to enunciate his feelings on the subject of Fran and Basch's 'relationship', instead he smirked slightly and humourlessly, deftly changing the subject in a round about manner.

'The Phoenix is in flight and I can't help but feel that you and I are sat in the middle of some vast trap the nature of which I cannot see but feel constantly.'

Ashe did not say anything for a moment, not accustomed to seeing, or hearing, her husband speak so opening about his fears. She nibbled her lip, 'As bad as all that? Are you really so worried about this 'Phoenix', surely it is simply a matter of pirates being pirates?'

Balthier shook his head shifting to his feet and away from the window embrasure, 'Pirates being pirates is concern enough, Highness, but this is something more than that.'

Ashe rose from the window as well deciding that she had wasted enough time attempting to be subtle and finagle the answers from him; now was time for the direct approach.

'I have been the very epitome of patience and restraint up until this point, Balthier,' he turned back to face her, eyebrows arching in dry amusement at the notion of Ashe being either patient or restrained. Ashe raised a hand to stop him from diverting her with a witticism, 'No, I have been, at least in regards to this.'

Balthier cocked his head to the side, arms folded across his vested chest, he nodded his head once in perfunctory acquiescence that in this one matter she had abided her own business and left him to his.

'But this has gone on long enough, however indirectly, our children are now involved. Tell me why this 'Phoenix' has you, and most of Balfonheim, so concerned.'

Balthier turned to look at the closed door of the room where Fran slept, minded by one of the palace healers. His brows were stitched together across his brow and his eyes dark with knowledge. Knowledge he appeared to be in no hurry to share.

'It is more than a few raids that has disturbed you, Balthier, you yourself once engaged in such activities. Why does this one pirate airship scare you so?' Ashe demanded.

'It is not so much the airship herself, though the 'Phoenix' stands unparalleled in terms of speed, manoeuvrability and armament, it is more the disconcerting fact that the ship is supposed to have been scrap metal for more than a decade and its captain most definitely dead, neither of which now appear to be the case.'

Balthier's lip curled in ironic disgust that did not quite disguise from Ashe's practiced and trained ear the timbre of concern and trepidation in his voice.

Ashe studied him thoughtfully while unconsciously mimicking his pose by folding her arms under her breasts, 'It would not be the first time a sky pirate presumed deceased and a ship supposed lost has risen from the dead,' she pointed out dryly, 'You yourself have pulled that trick more than once.'

Balthier met her eyes with a gaze devoid of humour, 'True, but unfortunately, in this instance the man resurrected most likely harbours a considerable grudge against myself and most of the ruling parties of Balfonheim.'

'And why would that be?' Ashe steeled herself for yet another bad decision from Balthier's tumultuous past to be thus revealed.

Her husband did not disappoint her, heaving a great sigh, Balthier managed a crooked, jaded half-smirk.

'No good, or particularly original, reason, I'm afraid, just the little matter of a blood debt to be repaid.' He began in the dry, urbane, and cheerful lilting tones he used when particularly worried or anxious about something or other he would really rather not discuss.

Ashe waited in silence, her expression giving no quarter. Balthier met her eyes, his gaze expressing a depth of cynical fatigue that spoke more clearly than words to how the matter of the 'Phoenix' had been weighing on him since the first murmurs of sky pirate raids of unusual ferocity reached his ears.

'You see, it was Fran and I that shuffled the captain of the 'Phoenix' off this mortal coil the first time, and unless death has changed the nature of the man considerably, that sort of slight is not the type of thing Aeneas, master of hearts, is going to ignore.'


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three: Wriggles in the Mud dies unlamented**

Wriggles in the Mud knew he had made a mistake almost as soon as he decided to investigate the Hume tracks just beginning to fill with water imbedded in the mud.

Wriggles in the Mud knew that Humes were hated; Humes were the enemy, the maligned heavy-foots who forced Wriggles in the Mud and the rest of his brethren from every home they had ever known.

Wriggles in the Mud thinks it would be a good thing to chase these Humes from this place, his new home, the place that once sheltered Humes and that the Humes stupidly lost long ago.

Wriggles in the Mud knew all about the swamp. He and his brothers know where to find the best grubs and the juiciest of the spittle-tongue insects that cultivated their lavae in the boughs of the Mist maligned trees that rose from the silty water of the swamp.

Wriggles in the Mud is fleet of foot, not like the heavy-foots. He is upon them very quickly and they don't see or hear him. They are too busy looking up at the Mist shrouded sky to look down on Wriggles in the Mud.

So like the heavy-foot humes.

Wriggles in the Mud smiles behind his face mask and scampers along the tracks and bridges of solid ground that rim the pools of noxious contaminated water the Banshee bathe in with ease.

Up ahead Wriggles in the Mud can hear one of the Heavy-foots cursing as he nearly slips into the treacherous waters.

Wriggles in the Mud cocks his head to the side and exhales loudly within his mask in a mixture of curiosity and contempt as he notices all the heavy equipment the group of four humes carry with them.

Wriggles in the Mud is not one of his Clans technomages but he recognises some of the equipment and blinks in surprise. The Humes are carrying water purifying units, fold away tents and air purification tanks upon their backs.

Wriggles in the Mud grips his stunted rifle tightly in his skinny hand; are the humes planning on setting up camp in clan territory?

Briefly Wriggles in the Mud thinks about racing back to his brothers and telling the elders about these trespassing heavy-foots, but if he does that he could lose their trail and the heavy-foots are tricksy.

Wriggles in the Mud continues alone in his pursuit of the humes.

Observant as only one of his kind can be Wriggles in the Mud observes the heavy-foot humes closely.

One man, the leader and the man who almost fell into the swamp pool, walks straight backed and proud; not tall, by hume standards, though he is a giant to Wriggles in the Mud, the heavy-foot is lean and wears a white frockcoat that somehow manages to avoid soaking up the ambient filth of the swamp. The man is walking with a map held up before his face and cannot see what is before him.

He does not need too, for there are others to look where he is going.

Among the three who walk, flanking the man in white, many contrasts exist. One male heavy-foot was heavy indeed. The man's shoulders were broader than Wriggles in the Mud was tall and his large hands were encased in leather gauntlet gloves. His skin was black as the burning mud which Wriggles in the Mud's fisher father sometimes fished up alongside the spine fish the clan ate.

The female hume to the white coated man's left moved more quietly than her companions, she had two rifles strapped to her back and a fall of long yellow hair; a splash of sunlight brightness but rarely seen in the swamps.

The fourth of the heavy-foots was a small man with grey streaked hair and the stooped shoulders of a scrying mage, or what the humes called a 'scholar'. He carried no weapon and scuttled after the white-coated leader looking hither and thither with panic pungent enough to attract a coven of banshee.

Wriggles in the Mud realised swiftly that the humes were headed for the fallen walls of Nabdas. Wriggles in the Mud did not know what the heavy-foots used to call the shadow place, the mournful ruin wherein the corpses of thousands of humes did moulder under the fallen masonry and hidden in Mist.

Why would heavy-foot humes, who shunned and feared the weeping desolation of the fallen city of Nabdas, even the clan did not venture into the Necrohol. The clan had respect for the fallen, even if they be heavy-foot, hated, humes.

Were the humes coming back to these swamps? Would they chase Wriggles in the Mud and his clan away from their home once more with burning torches and sparky magicks?

Wriggles hissed within his mask, clenching his skinny clawed fingers around the rifle. He would not let these humes chase the clan from their home; not this one, not again would the clan be condemned to wandering in the nasty lands of the heavy-foots.

Wriggles in the Mud followed the humes to the very walls of the Necrohol, weeping shadow shell of a city, that was once bright and busy with the heavy-foots.

Crouched in the sharp, cutting grass that rose a foot above Wriggles in the Mud's head, he watched the humes.

They seemed to be making camp; Wriggles stroked his rifle and watched the heavy-foots set up strange, whirring, busy boxes which squawked and whispered in wiry language.

The grey man muttered and murmured to himself as he pressed buttons and poked at the strange noisy boxes, the likes of which Wriggles in the Mud had never seen, with irritable fingers.

The giant midnight man put up the tents unaided while the man in white studied the still standing, war pitted and moss stained, walls of Nabdas, walking the perimeter with quiet pre-occupation.

It was then that Wriggles in the Mud realised he did not know where the woman-hume was.

Alarm shot through Wriggles in the Mud and he immediately shifted into action, ready to run, panting in fright through his mask. Wriggles started scampering away through the tall grass.

Something hit him from behind; Wriggles in the Mud felt something burning and sparky-smelling; the sharp, striking magick of heavy-foots, arced through the air behind him.

It struck the middle of his back and sent Wriggles in the Mud sprawling to the slipping, sliding mud of the swamps. The tall, cutting grasses burned. A neat path had been scorched through the rushes to where Wriggles in the Mud lay.

Wriggles in the Mud twisted around to face the heavy-foot that appeared in the that smouldering passage between the grasses; her tall metal boots crushed the ashes of the grasses into the black mud as she walked sedately towards him.

Behind his mask Wriggles in the Mud whimpered in pain. His spine was a cord of screaming light and pain and he could not move his legs.

The heavy-foot woman with the too pale and smooth skin crouched down before Wriggles in the Mud. Wriggles in the Mud flinched in fear as the hume with the dead eyes, deader than a banshee, reached down towards his face.

His brother, Eats fast and kills Faster, had warned him that the heavy foot humes were evil. That no one of the Clan should fight the hume-fiends alone, but only in hunting parties. Wriggles in the Mud wishes he had listened.

The Hume-fiend woman reaches down and carefully, neatly, removes Wriggles in the Mud's breathing mask from his face. Her eyes are still and quiet.

Wriggles in the Mud choked and spluttered, spine writhing and bowing as the foul, burning, ice-fire Mist (Hume Mist from evil heavy-foot wars) filled his lungs. Wriggles in the Mud is too small, his lungs too shallow, to be able to breathe through the thick concentration of Mist.

He begins to choke in earnest as the other three Hume-fiends gather around to watch. Wriggles in the Mud thrashes his hands and feet and tries to stand and run, but the evil Hume-woman's magick has already severed his spine.

Wriggles in the Mud is dying but the Humes want to watch him drown in Mist as well.

The grey man crouches on the other side of Wriggles in the Mud and holds within his hand something strange. A techno-box that pops and crackles in alien language that only the wicked hume can understand.

The hume waves the box-like wand over Wriggles in the Mud's body as he begins to vomit blood that spills from his exposed and open mouth down his tiny neck and naked chest.

It takes a long time, Wriggles in the Mud's body rebelling against him as his lungs kept trying to suck in more lethal Mist, but slowly Wriggles in the Mud's pain recedes. He can no longer see anything; the world is dark, darker even than the swamp mud, but Wriggles in the Mud can just barely hear.

He hears the hume fiends speak.

'One minute twenty-nine seconds; the Mist potency has diminished considerably. The last one died in less than a minute.'

'One minute or two, it is still unacceptable. Humes may be just about able to tolerate the Mist concentration without contracting Mist poisoning, but what about livestock and other races? Nabudis will not be revived for another century at this rate.'

'Peace, we are making progress. We will keep trying, and will find more test subjects.'

'We have been here seven days so far, do you not think the others of this ones ilk will start to notice the deaths?'

'They are Baknamy, they barely count as life-forms. Now toss this one into the swamp and let's make a further calibration to your machine, Professor Kry.'

Wriggles in the Mud felt his shattered body being lifted, without care or fanfare, into the air. He felt the air fail to catch him as he fell and crashed into the foul, liquid dark waters of the swamp.

At least the Banshee mourned him as they picked the flesh from his bones.

* * *

_A/N: That was a bit different, huh? Any guesses as to who the Humes were and what they are up to, hmm? ;)_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four: The perils of celebrity**

_A/N: thirteen reviews already...thank you so much! _

* * *

The man who performed the role of Balthier had never wanted to be famous.

On the face of it this one assertion, made in the privacy of his own thoughts, smacked of the most outrageous self-delusion and on the face of it the man behind Balthier would agree with that criticism.

On the face of it, but of course, those sorts of surface reflections were notoriously misleading.

He had devoted the formative years of his adult life to making the name of 'Balthier' famous. Creating a living legend that had no more fundamental truth than a work of creative fiction set between the pages of a book.

Somewhere along the way, unfortunately, fiction and what passed for reality had merged. The man in Balthier's clothes now found it exceptionally difficult to separate himself from his own performance.

Difficult, but not impossible; not for a man of his calibre.

To the uninformed eye the tall, lean, but powerfully built man, strolling nonchalantly through the streets of Rabanastre towards the aerodrome, looked much like any of the many travellers, traders, and well-heeled 'tourists' that now flocked to Rabanastre either to marvel at the (in Balthier's opinion hideous) confectionary architecture or seek gainful employment in the massive road building exercise Dalmasca was funding stretching from the border with the former Empire of Rozzaria to the west and the Ozmone Plains to the south.

If anyone he passed noticed the similarities in appearance between this man and the Queen of Dalmasca's consort, they thought only that, that it was an uncanny likeness and not that the Consort was sauntering the streets incognito with the intention of slipping away from Dalmasca before anyone noticed his absence.

Ashe liked to accuse him of outrageous vanity and Balthier actively encouraged the notion (he did happen to be rather particularly in regards his appearance and he did enjoy fine tailoring perhaps more than the next man) however as with almost everything he did, Balthier had an ulterior motive for his vanity.

Ask any one, close acquaintance or near stranger, to describe Balthier and chances were excellent that they would start with the clothes and then note the accent and manner of speech; all aspects of his persona easily changed when needs must.

Thus it was simplicity itself for one of the most recognisable personages in all Ivalice to blend into the crowds within the busy aerodrome terminal and wait patiently in line to pick up his ticket for a commercial flight to Archades.

All in all Balthier was feeling rather smug and pleased with himself; standing in his plain unadorned grey wool waistcoat, dull, weathered leather trousers and worn-heeled, but spectacularly comfortable, travelling boots.

Needless to say the fly in his tonic water emerged in the form of Basch Fon Ronsenberg, brow creased in a mixture of consternation and suspicion, striding deliberately straight towards Balthier.

Inwardly Balthier cursed a blue streak as he rapidly went through his remaining options, which consisted of crossing his fingers and hoping Basch was struck by a sudden and inexplicable coronary (as if he would be so lucky) or acknowledging the man and hoping the Landissian did not go and blurt out his name or, alternatively, and least likely to work, ignoring him and hoping the irritating man would go away.

Balthier stepped sideways out of the queue just enough to wave a languid hand and beckon Basch over with what he hoped was a vaguely welcoming expression on his face.

Basch, looking like thunder, marched over. He opened his mouth to form the first syllable of Balther's name as he came to a halt directly beside him.

Balthier, casually and nonchalantly, lifted one foot and brought it down hard on Basch's sandal clad metatarsals, grinding the heel in as he smiled engagingly and patted the other man on the shoulder in the pretence of a warm greeting.

'Ah, there you are. I had begun to think you would not make it and I should be forced to leave without you.'

Basch, face red from the toe-grinding stamp Balthier had given him, looked both annoyed and even more suspicious, but for all the fact that the man was dull, stolid, and sanctimonious, Basch was not a stupid man, and he nodded his head grimly once.

'Aye, I was delayed while attending to a mutual friend,' he replied pointedly, the veiled reference to Fran could not have been more obvious, as the older man grudgingly went along with Balthier's pretence for the moment.

Balthier smiled winningly and waved a hand, 'No matter, my good man, it does not appear that will shall be catching the midday departure to Archades at this rate anyway.'

Balthier cheerfully nodded his head towards the solidified queue of people waiting, seemingly in vain, to reach the service desk and purchase their ticket for flight.

Under the guise of casual conversation Balthier answered the question Basch was inevitably going to ask without forcing the man to tax the limits of his ingenuity and risk his accumulation of moral superiority by actively playing along with Balthier's ruse and doing something as underhanded as _lying. _

Basch narrowed his eyes even more as Balthier raised on his toes slightly to look clean over the heads of the rest of the queue (Dalamscans were so blessedly short) to see what the delay was at the desk.

'I would have thought it more convenient to travel straight to Balfonheim?' Basch suggested shrewdly.

Balthier dropped back down on his heels, having concluded that the ineptitude of the desk clerk was the cause of the delay (would never happen in Nalbina, wherein Balthier made damned sure the flights and all minutiae of the aerodrome ran without a hitch).

'Fire damage,' he replied disinterested, 'the aerodrome in Balfonheim is closed until further notice. Anyway, you may have a penchant to gamble and go whoring in the Port, my good sir, but my business is in Archades.'

He felt Basch twitch with surprise, and displeasure, at the blatant smear on his good reputation (the day Basch was seen within the confines of a Balfonheim brothel would be the day Balthier joined the fraternity of Kiltia). Basch frowned as his ill-thought out assumptions were proved false; Balthier suppressed the quiver of an amused smirk.

'What business do you have in Archades?' Basch murmured too low for anyone who might have chosen to eavesdrop to hear.

Not that anyone would be particularly interested in eavesdropping on the conversation of two very unremarkable men (Balthier did not really consider himself unremarkable, not even in his current attire, sans adornment and jewellery of any sort – but Basch's mundane and homespun lack of sparkle more than compensated).

'What business is it of yours?' Balthier purred equally low, sharp smile playing on his lips as the queue shuffled forward minutely.

Basch snorted derisively, 'Mine, none; but I dare say it will be of interest to your wife and to Fran. Though I suspect the latter knows of your intentions and the former most certainly does not.'

Balthier felt his smile lose whatever mirth it had once possessed and come to resemble more of a bearing of teeth than a pleasant expression. Swiftly he gained control of his countenance and turned a blandly indifferent, raised eye-brow look, on Basch.

Truly he loathed this man.

'If that is the case I fail to see why you are the one asking, as by your own assertion, it is no business of yours.'

'It is business of mine if _your wife _should ask me whether I have seen you and I am forced to report that I saw you leaving, while clearly attempting to remain anonymous, on a public transport for a city you have no obvious business going to.'

Balthier forced the smirk onto his face, as he considered why it was that the gods continued to mock him by ensuring that Basch Fon Ronsenberg continued to draw breath.

'No, that is not your business. That is the business of myself and my wife, as you so bullishly put it. Any involvement you have in the situation is purely down to your own sad lack of an independent existence beyond your delusional sense of responsibility to _my wife.' _

Balthier gritted his teeth and immediately regretted letting the other man rile him as an old lady before him in the queue rather rudely turned about to stare at he and Basch. Balthier smoothed his expression into one of mild politeness and nodded to the lady courtesy.

'Apologies madam,' he demurred and the elderly matron nodded once, frowning curiously as if she might, possibly, recognise him, before turning back to face the front of the queue.

Balthier turned back to Basch who was looking supremely smug, in a mild and uninteresting way. Balthier suspected, regretfully, that murdering the man in the middle of a crowded aerodrome foyer would do his attempt at anonymity no good whatsoever, mores the pity.

Yes, he really truly loathed Basch Fon Ronsenberg; he could not fathom what Fran saw in the man, especially as she usually had impeccable taste.

'Do you not have some manner of noble endeavour to pursue, sir, or are you so lost for a purpose since retiring from public service that you have resorted to trailing me like a lonely dog, hmm?'

Balthier asked mildly as he finally reached the ticket desk and ordered a one way ticket to Archades on the next available flight out. Basch, compounding Balthier's increasing exasperation even further, immediately cut in and ordered a ticket for himself, same destination.

Once they had left the ticket desk Balthier looked at the man askance, expecting an answer forthwith.

Basch nodded his head, something like amusement at Balthier's expense dancing in his pale blue eyes, 'Fran suspected you would take flight, as she so put it, and requested that I follow you in her stead,' he frowned 'she is worried as to your intentions. I must ask Balthier, do you seek revenge on Fran's behalf?'

Balthier ran his hands over the soft wool of his waste coat (Atholl wool, of course) and gave the man a droll look, 'As if I would deprive Fran of her just vengeance in such a matter. You may be the sort to make a lady's decision for her, but I do not. If Fran wishes vengeance that is between she and her attacker.'

Without waiting for his unwelcome companion to respond Balthier started walking towards the boarding lounge; the large carcass of the Archadia built commercial airship already idling in dock.

'Why take a commercial flight? Is the Strahl unfit to fly?'

Balthier shot a sharp look at Basch, interpreting the question as an insult, but Basch merely looked curious. He narrowed his eyes anyway, stung by the aspersion cast against the Strahl.

'The Strahl is always fit for flight, Citizen Basch. However as you have previously noted I am trying not to draw attention to myself or my actions. The Strahl is a tad too high profile a craft these days to risk her on this trip.'

'So Ashe does not know you are leaving?'

Basch asked, with a dry amusement in his tone that suggested he did not believe for a moment that Balthier would ever do something as honourable as mentioning his intentions to his wife before sneaking from her kingdom to perform acts of a questionable nature abroad.

It helped matters not at all that the former Dalmascan Knight, Judge Magister and part-time democratically elected representative of the newly liberated Landis, was in fact, absolutely right in his sanctimonious assumption.

Damn Basch Fon Ronsenberg.

'Perhaps she does, perhaps she does not, as yet, know of my departure, what of it?' Balthier retorted, smiling and nodding to the flight attendant who checked his ticket and wished him a good flight as he and Basch moved to board the airship.

Balthier consoled himself with the fact that he had, in fact, written Ashe a note, loosely indicating what he was planning to do, and where, and to whom. He was fairly confident that she would not find said missive until it was far too late for her to do anything about it, so all in all, he was satisfied.

He had performed his duties as a husband but not allowed said duties to interfere with his autonomy; such compromises made a successful marriage.

The interior of the airship was as spacious and plush as most of its breed; forming a kind of generic decadence that was so very Archadian, though here and there a little infusion of originality had been injected into the décor, with landscape paintings of Dalmascan beauty spots artistically recreated upon the walls of the main lounge and bar area.

Balthier, doing his best to ignore the blonde shadow, in the form of Basch, that he had inherited, sauntered over to the bar and slid his rear onto one of the velvet cushioned stools.

With a smile and a wink to the barmaid he ordered a double shot of Archadian Fire Water, straight, no tonic, with ice. Yes, it was a tad early for such a beverage, but he blamed his current (enforced) company and the knowledge of what unpleasantness he would have to engage in once he reached Archadia as an excuse.

At thirty-one, father of two, married six years, to a Queen, of all women (good gods, but he had become monstrously respectable, hadn't he?) Balthier almost considered himself too old for this sort of nonsense. Alas, fate and the cosmic balances governing such things as chance and good fortune did not seem to agree with him.

Basch ordered a pint of ale and sat down on the stool next to Balthier. 'Fran has told me of this Aeneas. She said that it was a man claiming to work for the pirate captain who attacked her, she also said that this Aeneas is supposed to be twelve years in his grave.'

'And?' Balthier drawled, swirling the clear spirit in his shot glass but not yet taking a sip. He looked down at the ruddy, polished surface of the bar.

Basch took a large swallow of his ale and set the tankard down precisely, 'I would know your intentions; you distain talk of vengeance and you travel not to Balfonheim but to Archades, a city, that despite many years separation, you still would prefer not to visit. Fran is concerned, her concern is therefore mine.'

Balthier resisted comment on this last statement, and Basch should have been grateful indeed for that forbearance, instead Balthier fished into the pocket of his waistcoat and flicked an irregularly shaped, rounded, coin with a hole bored through the centre, onto the polished surface of the bar.

'Know you what this is, Citizen Basch?'

Basch picked up the old, worn, and thin coin studying it curiously, 'Aye this is a Quidion; they are seen but rarely now and never usually outside of a collectors market.'

Basch put the coin back on the bar and Balthier picked it up, holding it to the light, so that he could all but peer through the perfectly chiselled hole in its centre. He rubbed his thumb over the worn smooth surface of the coin.

'Oh, indeed, and none are rarer than this coin and its siblings. You shall not see these in any collector's exhibit.'

Balthier murmured thoughtfully, the pad of his thumb tracing the almost faded markings on the coin in his hands, a set of weighing scales and a number five still just discernable as raised marks on the worn silver.

'There is some importance to this Quidion, I take it, and some reason that a form of obsolete currency that pre-dates the Gil, is in your possession?'

Balthier smiled faintly, but with very little humour, as with deft fingers he slipped the Quidion away again into his inner pocket, 'Oh, this is not my Quidion, this particular coin belongs, for the moment, to Fran. I should very much suspect that this little trinket is the reason Fran was all but eviscerated.'

Basch frowned sharply, 'Fran said naught of this to me,'

Balthier smiled, snake-like as he turned on his stool, glass in hand, and looked sightlessly out of the bank of windows to the flawless blue, cloud scudded, sky. The airship, with a gasp of hydraulics and a roll of glossair, pulled from the aerodrome and entered that perfect sky.

'Fran is nothing if not circumspect; it is not permitted to speak of the Quidion to outsiders. In fact you and I are both like to be gutted, much as a trout, and thrown headless into the Naldoa ocean should any in Balfonheim know I have even so much as let you see this coin.'

Basch, who had also turned his stool not to look at the sky but at the frustratingly enigmatic pirate before him, frowned and tensed imperceptibly.

'On whose authority?' he demanded, 'What reason would any in Balfonheim have for such barbarism?'

Balthier did not answer for a long moment, savouring as he did the near ethereal pleasure he gained from any sort of airship flight, from being in the clouds where he loved to be.

Finally he remembered the untouched drink in his hand, and without hesitation, knocked it back whole before turning to Basch.

'By order of the Lords Pirate of Balfonheim, of course, the keepers of the thirteen Quidion of Aspera.'

Basch gripped Balthier's sleeve (still white, still cotton, there were some things Balthier was not prepared to forego, even for anonymity's sake) 'Balthier, you are _one_ of those pirate lords.' Basch pointed out, in case Balthier had forgotten this pivotal fact.

Balthier carefully detached his sleeve from Basch's grip and fastidiously brushed out any creases.

'Yes, I know, and so you can appreciate something of my predicament, hmm? As I have no desire to disembowel and behead myself I am forced to get to the bottom of this mess; before my fellow lords pirate decide to slaughter each other under the edicts of a frankly ludicrous curse, the veracity of which I sincerely doubt.'

Basch almost groaned, 'Speak plain man.'

Balthier quirked an eyebrow, 'I thought I was.'

'Balthier,' Basch very nearly, but not quite, made of his name a curse. Certainly the older man did not seem in good spirits, nor at his most patient.

Balthier smiled languidly and rose from his stool, Basch followed impatiently as he strolled up the stairs to the observation deck and out into the sharp, exhilarating, headwind.

'Very well, I will elaborate for you benefit, my good sir. As a lord pirate I have an obligation to maintain the order of the pirate way of life, even if that lifestyle is no longer my own, thus it falls to me, as perhaps the only lord incumbent with a fully functioning brain, to discover the truth of the Phoenix.'

'And you needs must go to Archades to achieve this?' Basch demanded with no little acerbic bite to his tone.

Balthier walked out to the railings of the deck and tipped his face up in silent worship and communion with the sun and the wind and the broad open sky.

'Come now, Basch, you once wore the armour of a Judge, when investigating a crime one must investigate the last known whereabouts of the suspect for clues, correct?'

'Aye; so you suspect this Aeneas has links to Archades?'

Balthier could not resist a light chuckle at Basch expense. The poor loyal fool had no idea what trouble Fran had thrown him into, 'In a manner of speaking, Sir Basch.'

Balthier, having finished offering his devotions to the wind and the sky, once again turned and started walking back to the stairs and the sleeping cabins of the airship. He stopped and, impish grin in place, turned back to Basch who dogged his heels.

'Oh and we are like to need to purchase shovels and digging equipment upon arrival in Archades.'

Basch frowned, a world of suspicion shimmering in his cool blue eyes, 'Why for?'

Balthier smirked and tossed his head, delighting in having gained the advantage of the other man, and revelling in Basch's expected response once he knew precisely what task Balthier had to perform in Archadia.

'Grave robbing, my good sir,' he replied flippantly over his shoulder, 'I have no intention of digging up Aeneas' corpse with my own bare hands, after all.'

Basch stopped momentarily dead on the way to the sleeping cabins, Balthier continued down the corridor with a spring in his step and a smirk on his lips.

It had been an absolute age since he'd had this much fun; when he finally caught up with Aeneas, or whoever the real malcontent proved to be, he might actually have to thank the man before he put a bullet in his head for a second time.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter five: Enter Mayhew and Kry; there will be trouble ahead**

For as long as Hallie could remember her mother had told she and Heios that there was nothing they could not do if they put their minds to it. She always said it with a fierce look in her grey eyes that had made this statement the cornerstone of Hallie's sense of self; there was nothing she could not do.

Thus Hallie had decided that today she would be a sheep.

In the palace gardens there was a small enclosure where five Atholl sheep were kept for ceremonial purposes such as the opening of the new parliamentary year and the Queen's wedding anniversary.

The Princess of Dalmasca was now inside the fenced off enclosure on her hands and knees attempting to chew the cud without a great deal of genuine enjoyment. Her brother the Prince of Nabradia watched her from outside the pen from over the rim of his open book.

'Nanny will be displeased with you; Humes do not eat grass.'

Hallie, pressed between two sheep whose names were Dolly and Big Bertha, reacted with the dignity of a future queen and the sincerity of a sheep, 'Bleeeah!'

In her eagerness to impersonate the sheep she somewhat over did it and her loud bleeting startled Big Bertha who shied away and ran to the other side of the pen. Hallie spat out the half chewed Ozmone grasses from her mouth and scuttled across the pen after the disgruntled Bertha.

Heios shook his head and settled himself, with his back to the pen, cross-legged on the ground, head bowed over his book.

'Bleeeh, baaaa-baaaaa, bleahhh,' Hallie, in characteristic fashion, proved to be a rather vocal sheep.

Heios, in equally characteristic fashion, ignored her.

An unspecified amount of time later, Hallie having exhausted the limits of what a sheep did for fun, was just beginning to think that it would high time to turn herself back into a hume (Hallie believing absolutely that she was a sheep – her mother had said she could be anything she wanted to be after all) when Captain Vaan arrived.

'Hey,' Vaan ambled over to the pen and crouched down beside Heios, 'What're you reading?'

Heios lifted his eyes to regard Vaan seriously, 'One hundred and one gruesome tales for boys; father gave it to me but I am not supposed to tell mother.'

Vaan lifted the book from Heios' hands and flicked through the pages, 'Nice. Wish I'd had a book like this when I was a boy; hey, can I burrow this when you're done?'

Heios smiled, 'Of course Captain.'

Of all the assorted attendants and adherents of their mother, and allies of their father, that had ever greeted and spoken with Heios Vaan was by far his favourite. Sometimes he and Vaan read together; Vaan being fairly new to the prospect of reading for pleasure and Heios enjoying little else.

'Great, now I have to find your sister, know where she is?'

Vaan glanced over at the sheep in the pen and in particular the small, woolless sheep with the silver slippers and the messy, grass stained face who was watching him intently from between the fence posts.

'Bleeh; baaa-baaaa.'

Vaan's face twisted for a moment in suppressed laughter, 'Huh, I could have sworn I heard Hallie just then….odd, and what's that sheep doing in there? She's far too pretty to be in with Big Bertha and Dolly.'

Hallie the sheep preened, 'Baaa-baaa!'

Captain Vaan reached over and patted Sheep-Hallie on the head turning to address Heios casually, 'Too bad your sister's not here. There are visitors in the palace and I was going to loiter about looking menacing while Ashe talks to them; I know how much Hallie likes to do that with me.'

Vaan rose to his feet and stepped away from the pen. Heios, took his hand and the two walked off together towards the palace; Hallie bleeted in alarm and leapt upright beginning to climb over the fence.

'Wait, wait, I'm here, it's me. I want to stare at the strangers too!'

Vaan turned sharply on his heel, expression morphing into one of seemingly genuine surprise. 'Wow, _Princess_, is that _you_?'

Hallie ran over to the Captain and her brother, 'I was a sheep and you did not know me.' She declared proudly, delighted that her powers of disguise were enough to fool even someone who had known her since birth; Hallie suspected delightedly that even her father would not have known her.

Vaan's eyes widened appreciatively, 'I never would have guessed.'

Hallie took his other hand, grinning enormously, as the Queen's Captain led the two royal children into their mother's presence.

Ashe, sitting on her 'day throne' which was less ornate, less imposing, and considerably more comfortable than her chair of state, took one look at Hallie, grass stained and bright eyed, and rolled her eyes gesturing with one hand for her ladies to attempt some repairs on her daughters appearance.

'Let me guess, she was a Chocobo again?' Ashe glanced at Vaan with one quirked eyebrow. Vaan grinned and shook his head.

'Sheep,'

Ashe arched both eyebrows, 'A sheep?'

'Uh-huh,'

While this conversation was taking place Hallie was trying to extricate herself from the fussing of a bevy of lady attendants and their tongue dampened handkerchiefs as they wiped her face, finger combed her hair, and brushed out her skirts.

'Leave me be; I am a princess, that's an order.'

In an act of treasonous dissent the lady attendants ignored this express royal edict. They did not release the wriggling Hallie until she was at least part way respectable. When they did she fled to her mother's side, grasped a handful of her mother's skirts, and glared daggers at her mother's ladies.

'Just you wait, when I am queen I'll cut you all into collops and serve you up as Balfonheim stew.'

Hallie had no idea what 'cullops' were, how one cut them, or quite what a Balfonheim stew was. However she had once heard father, Fran, and Vaan joking about the monstrous things that went into Balfonheim stew and considered it a good enough threat for the moment.

Her mother tapped her on the head in light reproof, 'Behave Hallie, or I shall send you back to your arithmetic lessons.'

Hallie immediately stopped glaring at the ladies and contrived an expression of serene goodness upon her face; she did not enjoy arithmetic.

Heios walked over, book tucked secretively under one arm, their mother smiled at him as he settled himself on the other side of her chair and she stroked his hair.

'At least you are sensible, Heios, though considering your lineage I am sure I have no idea where you inherited that from; my father I think.'

Hallie did not say anything as she settled down to her mother's right and rested her cheek against the gilded chair leg, where she had a perfect view of the big double doors of the audience chamber.

Their mother nodded to Vaan to open the doors and usher their guests into the chamber.

Hallie was instantly disappointed as two men, one very old and stooped, the other of middling age and middling height with very red hair, entered the chamber.

Hallie had been hoping for someone interesting to enter, President Al-Cid maybe, who talked funny and brought her delicious pastries in the shape of yellow butterflies and called her 'little desert bloom', or maybe the big Landis man with the booming laugh who came to visit father – Hamish – was his name.

Instead this old man (even older than great uncle Halim, who was very old in Hallie's opinion and walked with a stick) came in, walking very slowly alongside the other man, dressed in a white coat and black boots with his red curly hair, who carried a big leather box that was the only interesting thing about the visitors.

'Professor Kry; Master Mayhew, I was not expecting you so soon.'

Hallie studied both men intently as the old man nodded in a deep bow and the red-headed man dropped into a very good kneeling bow at the foot of their mother's chair.

'Greetings your Majesty,' the red headed man paused and smiled faintly at both Hallie and her brother (Hallie noticed curiously that the man had freckles – Hallie had not known grown-ups had those), 'Ah, forgive me, I should say greetings your _majesties_.'

Hallie blinked as she realised that this man sounded a lot like her father – which must mean that he was Archadian; Hallie decided right then that this man was more interesting than she had first thought.

'Hello, Donaugh, you are back sooner than anticipated, you stated that your fieldwork in Nabudis would take another month, have you experienced difficulties?'

Both Hallie and Heios looked up to their mother in surprise as they registered the name 'Nabudis'. All Hallie knew about that kingdom was that her brother was the Prince and that because something bad had happened long before her birth no one could live there anymore.

Beyond that Nabudis was of little concern to Hallie; if people could not live there then there were many other places they could live, after all.

The red haired man smiled broadly and Hallie noticed that he had one gold front tooth, 'The exact opposite, in fact, your majesty. Our work progresses ahead of schedule and I thought you would wish to see the preliminary results for yourself?'

Their mother shifted in her seat, sitting forward and upsetting one of the cream coloured velvet cushions. Hallie caught the cushion and looked up at her mother in surprise.

'You have experienced some success already? The Mist is abating?'

The red-haired man nodded once, a smile playing about his lips, The gods must be behind our work, your majesty, we have recorded a fifteen per cent drop in Mist concentration and noted numerous subsequent beneficial effects on the surrounding flora and fauna.'

Hallie had no idea what the man was talking about and one quick glance at her brother made it clear that he did not either, however their mother seemed to understand and her expression was a strange one.

An odd convergence of something fierce and bright and something like fear flashed over her mother's face as Hallie watched perplexed.

Hallie continued to watch her mother, who rubbed a finger over her lips, thoughtfully. When she spoke she did not sound much like the mother Hallie knew. 'You shall be wanting more Gil then, if you have indeed exceeded the parameters of the original agreement.'

The red-haired man opened his mouth, hands opening and arms spreading in a conciliatory action, but it was the old man who stepped forward and spoke in crotchety voice, tugging on his long white beard as he did so.

'We live in a world of Gil, your majesty, the pursuit of greater wealth and power destroyed Nabudis and it will take Gil, power and conviction to restore her.' He said bluntly, without the courtesy most accorded her mother by virtue of her status.

The red-haired man turned to look angrily over his shoulder at the other man, 'Majesty what Professor Kry means is that – '

'That if Dalmasca wishes to see her sibling kingdom restored she will have to shut up and pay the price,' her mother interrupted dryly, 'Yes, Master Mayhew, I think Professor Kry and I understand each other perfectly.'

The red-haired man (Master Mayhew) smiled wryly, 'It is the way of scientists, I'm afraid, they have little cares for social niceties. Funding is a concern, I will not deny it, and as I stated we are keen to work with your majesty to see Nabudis restored. I would humbly suggest that your majesty can have no qualms as to the quality of our work, surely?'

Hallie had started sucking on her fingers; she did not know what was going on, who these men were, or what her mother and the men spoke of, but she did not like it. There was something in the red-haired man's smile and the old man's rudeness coupled with her mother's seeming lack of comfort that alarmed her.

'I have little love of science, Master Mayhew, though I recognise its necessity and value. You will report your findings and corresponding evidence to my chief of Sciences at the Guild of Thinkers and he will advise me whether or not it is in my interest for Dalmasca to continue to fund your scientific endeavours.'

The old man opened his mouth, brows dipping dangerously and Hallie tensed wondering if the old man (who she did not like) was about to say something rude to her mother again. If he did Hallie would chop him into collops; no one should ever speak to her mother, the Queen, in such a way.

Instead the red-haired man waved his hand at the older man who shut his mouth with an audible click of old, chipped, teeth. The old man started walking towards the door before her mother had dismissed him.

Captain Vaan stepped up to block the doorway, but to Hallie's shook and confusion, her mother waved him away, essentially allowing the old man to disrespect her in such a way.

The red-haired man gathered up the big leather box and bowed to her mother with an apologetic smile before following after the horrible old man. Grudgingly Vaan opened the door for the pair, though he did not look happy anymore.

After they were gone Vaan walked over to their mother, 'I don't like those men Ashe. I don't trust them. Using Nethicite to get rid of Nethicite Mist; it just doesn't seem right.'

Ashe rose from her chair, still distractedly rubbing at her lip with her finger, 'I don't much _like _it myself, Vaan, but Master Mayhew and his loathsome Professor Kry are the only two scientists in all Ivalice who not only have a theory to counteract the Nethicite Mist but are prepared to put it into practice.'

'They used to work for Draklor, Ashe. They probably helped make the bomb that destroyed Nabudis the first time.'

Ashe turned to Vaan sharply, 'I know that, _Captain.' _she snapped and Vaan took a step back and shook his head, not frightened but clearly disappointed and unhappy.

Ashe unclenched her fists and took a cleansing breath, murmuring quietly, 'Who better to revive Nabudis than those who helped destroy her?'

'You should tell Balthier about these men, Ashe, if there're Draklor then they worked with _Dr Cid_.' Vaan said quietly, but firmly. Only he (and sometimes Hallie's father) could get away with talking to the Queen in such a way.

Hallie and Heios, all but forgotten for the moment, looked from the two adults in silent incomprehension. Heios crept over to Hallie's side of the throne and clasped his sister's hand in response to the sudden tension in the room.

Ashe rounded on Vaan, 'Do not presume to tell me how to govern. I am Queen, not Balthier, and this is a matter of state. Balthier does not need to know anything about it.'

Vaan snorted derisively, 'Ashe, his own father blew Nabudis up in the first place, I'd say it was his business and I think he'll think so too, when he finds out.'

Ashe glowered, 'I think you'll find Balthier is a little busy defiling graves at the moment to notice very much of anything.' She hissed, brandishing a crumpled piece of paper.

'I found this note this morning; shall I read it to you?' Ashe all but snarled.

Vaan, well used to the volatile ways of his queen and his friend, merely sighed and waited patiently for Ashe to spend her ire.

''Dear, highness, I am taking a quick sojourn to Archadia to exhume the body of Aeneas, should be back sometime tomorrow. P.S. kiss the children goodnight for me, will you?''

Vaan winced, 'Well, at least he told you he was going this time,' he pointed out fairly.

Ashe snarled and threw the piece of paper to the ground, 'Under the circumstances, Vaan, I do not feel that I owe Balthier any explanations.' Ashe stated in cool fury, turning her back and folding her arms across her body.

'I am Queen and I will damned well stand by my convictions. I swore that Nabudis would be restored and gods help me, I will see that it is for Heios' coronation.'

Heios, upon hearing his name, let go of Hallie's hand and stepped forward, bottom lip quivering as the tension in the room affected him, 'Mother?'

Ashe and Vaan both turned towards Heios and the throne where Hallie loitered, identical expressions of chagrin and guilt on their faces as they realised they had just had the entire argument in front of two impressionable children.

'Oh, Heios precious, come here, everything is fine, don't cry.' Their mother enveloped her brother in a loving embrace and kissed the top of his dark head as he wrapped his arms around her neck.

'Mother, you do not have to worry about my coronation. I do not need another kingdom. I am happy here.'

'Oh, sweetheart,' their mother half-smiled sadly as she kissed his head once more; then she reached out towards Hallie.

Hallie cautiously stepped forward aware, in a vague way, of new undercurrents of tension and danger painting the air of her familiar surroundings in subtle, threatening, shades.

As she allowed her mother to enfold her into a fierce embrace, Hallie came to the conclusion that it was the strangers fault. This Master Mayhew and Professor Kry were responsible for upsetting both her mother and Vaan and she determined, being the fearless pirate princess that she was, to find out exactly what the two men were hiding in their big leather box.

She would find out what the nasty men were hiding and show her mother, then her mother would banish the rude old man and the gold-toothed smiling man far away and everything would be well again.

This Hallie swore, in the very spirit of her mother, that she would get to the bottom of the mystery of Mayhew and Kry.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six: Reflections on an unnecessarily complicated man **

Basch Fon Ronsenberg had ever lived in complicated times.

By the dusk of his seventeenth year he was a veteran of a lost war and a refugee in a strange land, a born republican serving a foreign king. By the time Basch was thirty-six he was a refugee of capricious fate, a man believed dead and vilified as a king-slayer.

At forty-five Basch knew all about complications, thus he took a certain amount of quiet, unassuming pride in being a profoundly uncomplicated man.

For this reason Basch had a natural inclination towards dislike for those men who might be referred to as 'complicated'.

Thus, all things considered and all forces of time and place being equal, Basch was not in the best of spirits at this current moment, presently at the mercy of arguably one of the most unnecessarily complicated men he had ever met.

Basch, swiping a hand across his forehead, continued to walk, steadily and with the surety of a man who has crossed more diverse terrain in his time than most, across the boggy marshland along the inlet of the river Saraches some thirty miles south of Archades following a man whose purpose was so far beyond obscure that it was, frankly, ludicrous.

To make matters worse, Basch had the distinct impression that Balthier was lost.

'We have passed this hornbeam tree thrice already, Balthier. You are sure you know where you are going?'

The younger man, who was busy scratching irritably at an insect bite on his neck, turned to face Basch in the dull, greyish glooming of the falling twilight. Basch was considerably disheartened when Balthier's ironic smirk curled into place upon his lips.

'Oh, yes, quite sure.'

The other man led off again, seeming quite spry as he nimbly traversed the thin bridges of solid ground that formed a lattice-work of safe walkways through the black bog all around.

Basch, who was not a demonstrative man, he had little time for suffering, viewing deprivation as a state of mind, not reality, and believing that anger and expressions thereof were a sign of indiscipline and weakness, simply followed on Balthier's heel, the shovel over his shoulder.

The fourth time they passed the hornbeam tree Basch decided that it was apt to make further comment.

'We travel in circles, Balthier.'

Again the younger man stopped and again he smirked inanely back at Basch, the expression of mirth seeming at odds with their current predicament.

'I was wondering how long it would take you to notice that, my good man.'

Basch resisted the temptation to frown and instead spoke to the man before him as he might to the man's own son or daughter, slowly and with careful patience, 'You are lost, I take it?'

If possible the smirk on the other man's face grew deeper; Basch had the distinct impression he was the target of an elaborate and decidedly less than amusing practical joke.

'On the contrary, I know precisely where I am. I simply don't know where I am going, there is a difference.'

For just the briefest of moments Basch considered bringing the shovel down on Balthier's head with all the force he could muster. It was a passing fancy, gone almost as soon as it arose, but its dying embers warmed Basch to his soul.

In front of him Balthier was plucking at his white shirt frowning in abstracted fashion. Basch studied him quite intently.

Fran rarely spoke of her partner in crime to Basch but on one occasion she had remarked that if one wanted to know Balthier's mind, it was imperative to watch what he _did_ and not what he_ said_, this suggestion Basch had taken to heart.

'If you cannot find where you buried this man is there any purpose for us being here?'

Basch questioned bluntly when he suspected that the other man was becoming lost in his thoughts.

Fran had also once said, when Basch had told her about his theory of reality being merely a state of mind, that if that was so, reality had no place in Balthier's state of mind. Basch had rather enjoyed this reflection, having long held the view that Cidolfus had not been the only Bunansa lunatic in the family line.

Balthier regarded Basch disdainfully, 'If I was truly intending on digging up a particular corpse, then no, there would little point in being here, now that I am sure that the corpse is no longer where I left it.'

Silence reigned in the aftermath of this imperious announcement as Balthier began pacing onwards pointlessly once more. Once again the thought of braining the younger man floated through Basch's mind as he set foot after Balthier.

To Basch it seemed passing the point of cruel and unusual treatment that Balthier had not only led him through an insect infested swamp for the last two hours only to realise he could not find a grave in the dark that he had dug and filed almost twelve years prior, but now it appeared he had never truly sought it in the first place.

Just why had the arrogant lunatic insisted on coming out to this fetid, dark, stinking place in the first place?

'If you had no intention of exhuming the bones of this Aeneas, to see if he has truly risen from the dead, then why are we here and why did you insist on purchasing a shovel?'

Balthier turned back towards him and smiled, the smirk spreading across his face, sharp and devious in the dim, sickly, moonlight filtering through the willow trees, 'For the appearance of the thing; anyone following us would think it odd should we enter the pirates graveyard without the means to defile the resting places of those interred.'

Basch considered the correlation between madness in a parent and the development of insanity in the child, with a view to being concerned for the mental health of the twins, as he regarded Balthier steadily.

'We are not followed,' he pointed out with certainty. Basch was not a man to lay his reputation on a statement unless he was certain, and he was certain of this. Thirty years as a soldier had given him a keen sense of when he was being watched, pursued, or stalked.

Balthier shrugged languidly smile playing across his lips, 'I like to always assume I am being followed, I have found that sooner or later I am proved correct.'

Basch wisely deferred from comment and once more Fran's words floated melodiously through his thoughts, _Balthier plays at everything; he dances through life and it is but rarely that he is truly paying heed to circumstance in one moment or another. _

'Then what is your true purpose, Balthier, and do not think to deter me, for I know that you must have one.'

For a moment Balthier's smile slipped, and it seemed to Basch this might be one of the rare moments that Balthier was actually giving due consideration to his circumstances and Basch's waning patience; Balthier could try the patience of the Gran Kiltias herself as Basch knew from first hand account.

'I was thinking,' Balthier tugged at his sleeves, 'this little drama is not falling out as I had suspected and I find myself forced to reconsider my assumptions. I very much expected to be attacked should I so much as set foot along the banks of Saraches.'

Basch raised his scarred brow considering, 'And Fran must also have suspected such, else she would not have requested I accompany you.'

Balthier did not reply, and in his silence Basch heard confirmation of his statement. There was a moment's silence which dragged into a longer moment, Balthier still and quiet, face set into a scowl.

'I don't like this Basch. I am beginning to think that this is not a pirate threat at all, but something else.'

Basch remained silent. Balthier had just voluntarily addressed him by his name and not any number of ironic titles he had bestowed upon Basch in the near ten years of their acquaintance. Basch had noted that Balthier had an aversion to addressing people by their given name, he rarely even called Ashe by her name, thus this momentarily slip denoted the sobriety of his thoughts.

'Aeneas was only the third person I had ever killed, did you know that Basch?' Balthier was not looking at him as he spoke but instead had turned his head to scowl outward across the thick sludge of the swamp floodplain.

Basch waited, there was no need to speak, Balthier would either confide further details or he would not; Basch was not a man to force a confession no matter how much he might think himself entitled to an explanation.

Balthier had turned back to regard Basch curiously, head-cocked and arms folded across his chest in a pose that reminded Basch a little of Fran (but then that was understandable, Basch had once or twice observed Fran plucking at her sleeves on the rare occasion that she wore long-sleeved garments).

'Well,' Balthier spoke into the dull silence of the swamp stillness, his voice over loud as if compensating for his own lack of ease, 'there is no purpose in staying here; clearly no one is planning on killing me, which is highly inconvenient, so I suppose we should make for Archades.'

Basch arched an eyebrow inquiringly but merely nodded in silent acquiescence. He knew Balthier well enough to recognise that not asking any questions would frustrate the man more than asking them; Balthier could not tell his pretty stories if Basch did not provide him with an opening to do so.

Many people presumed Basch above pettiness, thus it made it so much easier for him to indulge himself without fear of reprisal.

For just a moment the slyly expectant look on Balthier's face slipped into annoyance as he recognised that Basch would not take the bait. Basch maintained his own staid implaccable expression and waited.

Balthier smiled and inclined his head towards Basch, in silent acknowledgement that Basch could not be played quite so easily, 'I shall buy you a drink for your troubles, your _former_ honour, I happen to know a very reputable establishment in Tsenoble.' Balthier made the offer in concilidatory tones.

Basch allowed himself a slight, genuine smile. He was thirsty, hot, and insect-bitten in any number of unfortunate places, a drink in pleasant surroundings sounded like very good recompense indeed.

'Talia's Tavern, would be the place?' he queried mildly, having quite extensive knowledge of Archades better drinking and dining establishments of his own.

Balthier did not answer, but instead a long drawn out hiss escaped his suddenly gritted teeth and the younger man seemed to waver on his feet, the arms folded across his chest clutching his sides as if in sudden pain.

'Balthier?'

Instantly alert Basch changed his grip on the shovel in his hands (the only manner of offensive weapon either of them possessed) recognising the possibility of an unseen attack. Basch looked about him into the flat corners of the open ground on all sides.

Across the open, muddy, waters of the floodplain, in a hedge row of overgrown foliage and underbrush, Basch caught sight of something silver, winking in the unsteady, pale moonlight.

The reflection of that silver light struck against Balthier's right temple as the other man stood, staring sightlessly ahead, as if caught in trance. Basch, who had seen his fair share of magickal traps, did not attempt to reach for Balthier, lest he too become ensnared.

The light emanating from across the fetid lake of liquid algae and mud bounced in a bright arc of silver and Balthier gasped in strangled pain and fell to his hands and knees.

Basch strained ever sense and fighter's instinct he possessed to seek out any other attackers, suspecting that an ambush was in the offing and should he go to aid Balthier they would find themselves suddenly outnumbered by aggressors.

However for all his many years of honed soldier's discipline and training, all the monstrous and sublime sights he had witnessed in his years, Basch had never seen magick quite like that which afflicted Balthier as he shuddered and shook on hands and knees before him now.

It seemed to Basch that under the pale, grey-black night sky, against the patchwork quilt of dull greys, greens, and shadow browns of the marshland, Balthier's visage blurred as if it was reflected in a heat haze and the man's very self seemed to split and come apart at the seams.

Balthier screamed as something seemingly insubstantial, yet pulsing with its own strength, stretched out, uncurling from within his cowered form.

Before Basch's admittedly dumbfounded eyes, a very young man dressed in dark black chain mail and leather trousers covered in the dull metal greaves and plate mail armour of an Archadian lesser Judge, stood up and turned to stare confusedly at Basch.

Basch was not sure what struck him more, the smouldering, nearly pathological anguish that burned in the depths of the man – no _boy's_ – eyes or the fact that, despite the painful youthfulness of the apparitions features, the slightly curling pale brown hair falling messily over an almost sullen, sallow face, Basch recognised the face of this ghost.

Basch was staring eye to eye into the face of the true Ffamran Mid Bunansa, a boy who held his judge's helmet in one hand and whose eyes blazed with a dangerous will and conviction.

_Well don't just stand there, do something, can't you see they are trying to kill the other me?_

Even before the strident, sharply aristocratic tones of the very young man's voice floated through the ether and needled like insect stings against Basch's mind, he had already swung the blade of the shovel up and around through the air over Balthier's prone form.

Basch slammed the shovel head into the thick mud by Balthier's body, affectively cutting off the path of the flickering silver light being reflected from across the marsh. As an added defence Basch stood before Balthier's helpless physical form, gripping the shaft of the shovel as he would a sword, solid and impregnable as the light bounced harmlessly off him.

'Balthier you must get up; we are under attack and I do not know if more wait in the shadows.'

Basch spared a quick glance behind him, addressing himself to either the apparition of Balthier's true self that had been somehow dragged into the light from the depths of his soul, or the flesh and blood man.

The spirit appeared to have vanished as swiftly as it had arrived but the real Balthier was trying to lever himself up in disorganised fashion, shaking his head as if to clear it.

'Balthier, we have to move, can you run?' Basch reached behind him to jerk Balthier up onto his knees, though was careful to keep shielding the other man with his body.

Their hidden aggressor had already attempted to move in the underbrush so as to hit Balthier once more with the light that had had such devastating affect before. Basch could not keep blocking the light indefinitely; they had to get out of the open.

'Ghhn...here...take it...'

Balthier reached up and pushed something metallic and rounded into the hand Basch had been using to haul the other man upright. Basch lifted his hand to see what it was that Balthier had handed him and was only marginally surprised to find himself in possession of the Quidion Balthier had shown him earlier on the airship.

'...bounce the light back, the coin is one of six balances, it will break the spell.' Balthier did not sound well, head hanging low and breathing unsteadily through his mouth; Basch suspected that his physical presence was not so much disrupting the spell being wrought against Balthier but merely weakening it.

Basch was an uncomplicated man and thus, because he did not believe that every action needed to be questioned and every mystery solved, Basch did simply as Balthier suggested.

He raised the Quidion towards the light dancing across the marsh from the copse of willow trees. In a sudden, cold, burning flash of reflected ambient light the Quidion in Basch's hand caught the light from their aggressor and bounced it back in a blue-white arc of wild magick.

Basch hissed but did not let go of the coin as the magick discharge caused the metal to heat like fire and burn like frostbite against his fingers.

Across the boggy, swirling, muddy waters, the sharp gasping broken scream of a woman broke the still, dull silence of the marshland with the jarring brilliance of breaking glass.

Briefly, as the arc of blue-white fire grounded like a bolt of lightening between the trees, setting afire to the mulberry bushes hiding their attacker, Basch caught sight of a female figure, tall and svelte, with a head of yellow-gold hair.

The woman immediately turned and ran as the fire in the underbrush grew in stature and Basch instinctively made move as if to give chase, a strong grip on his arm pulled him up short.

Basch turned back to see that Balthier had managed to get to his feet once more, though his face was drawn and pale and sweat beaded his top lip.

'Leave her; we have more pressing business to attend to.'

Basch frowned and took a firm grip on Balthier's shoulder, the other man still seeming none too steady on his feet, 'What goes on here, Balthier, what manner of Magick was that?'

Balthier sigh, head drooping even as he waved a dilatory hand in dismissal of Basch's questions.

'Not Magick, Basch, a curse; one I did not myself believe in until tonight.'

'You have much explaining to do, Balthier.' Basch pointed out with dangerous steadiness. Balthier met his eyes and for a moment Basch saw the wild, dark anguish and determination of the boy-spirit reflected in the man's dilated pupils.

'I do indeed, but not now, not here, and not to you, at least not yet. We have something more important matters that need be addressed.'

Basch allowed Balthier to disengage from his hold and stagger a few steps away from him. He watched the other man closely. Balthier may be a man with a near pathological incapacity to tell the unvarnished truth, but Basch was inclined to believe him if he said they had something more pressing concerns than conversation that needed to be addressed at this time, especially when he had rarely seen Balthier look more grave.

'And what pressing matter is that?' Basch asked deceptively mildly as he came abreast with Balthier and slipped an arm around the younger man to assist him, as walking unaided seemed to be beyond Balthier at present.

It was likely a testament to Balthier's own discomfiture that he accepted the assistance without a word as they made their way, as swiftly as they could, from the open marsh and through the gnarled passageways of the swamplands.

'I have never seen it in action and did not believe the stories true, but I believe I know what spell was wrought on me and whence it came.' Balthier murmured vaguely, panting and sweating, clearly still badly afflicted by said spell.

'Indeed and what was this spell, for I have never seen it's like before.'

'Nor should you have, it is the spell of true divining; a spell locked within the seventh Quidion of Aspera, the coin of Truth.'

Basch grunted as Balthier slipped on a patch of rotting mulch, legs giving way and forcing Basch to support almost all his weight. It was Basch's opinion that Balthier held onto consciousness by a thread of pure stubbornness.

'These coins again, what manner of curse is it that can tear a man's soul near straight out of his still living body?'

Basch spoke aloud but more to himself than to Balthier, whose breathing was laboured and whose steps were unsteady, weight bearing more heavily upon Basch.

Thus Basch was startled when Balthier's face turned towards him sallow and sickly, sheened in a fever sweat, 'That is the least of our troubles; I am more concerned by the fact that I was attacked with that particular Quidion. For you see, I know who should be in possession of the coin of Truth and cannot imagine that she would have any just cause to rend my soul from my body.'

Basch felt a shiver of apprehension pass over his spine at Balthier's words, and the dark, serious look in the other man's pained eyes.

'Who had the coin, Balthier?' Basch asked quietly, though a horrible suspicion was dawning that he would not like the answer.

Balthier seemed almost to wince, and sag further in Basch's arms as they finally reached the grassy, solid banks of the river Saraches, escaping the thorned tangle of trees and brambles lining the entrance to the marshes.

Balthier slid to his knees in the lush grass, the river gurgling and rushing alongside the bank. Over the burble of the river Basch almost missed Balthier's answer to his question.

'...Penelo, we gave the damned thing to Penelo...'

Basch could only stare down at Balthier, 'Penelo?'

'...yes...' Balthier was panting like a wounded animal lying on his side; his eyes squeezed shut in some great deal of pain.

Basch found his own eyes roving along the river bank, following the contours of the land and the water northwards to where the high spires of upper Archades were just visible over the tree-tops.

'Then someone has stolen the coin from her in order to use its magick against you; this Aeneas man, much as he attacked Fran to acquire her coin, presumably so that she could not give it to you and you could not use the one coin to counteract the other.'

Basch reasoned out loud, Balthier looked up at him from the bank, dark eyes slitted in pain, teeth bared and breathing in ragged hisses of pain. Yet when he spoke it was with cold, deadened certainty.

'Penelo would not leave that coin somewhere it could be easily stolen; she would not relinquish it without a fight.'

Basch ruthlessly suppressed his reaction to those fatalistic words, understanding well what Balthier had not said. If Penelo would fight to retain that coin, but had still evidently lost possession of it the obvious outcome of that fight and the reason Penelo had lost the coin did not bear thinking on.

Bad enough that Fran had been so near fatally wounded, bad enough that magick the like of which Basch had never heard tell of had so stricken Balthier, but Basch refused to countenance the notion that Penelo also could have been harmed.

Aggressively and with little sympathy for Balthier's obvious pain, Basch forcibly hauled the younger, lighter, man to his feet and began to propel him forward to where they had moored the small boat they had taken down river to reach the marshes.

Basch all but threw the near insensate Balthier into the boat and started the small engine; powering the small boat upstream towards the Empire's capital and the distant spires of the Imperial Palace.

Whether Balthier liked it or not, he and Basch were headed for the Palace and therein, once assured of Penelo's safety, Basch would string Balthier up in the Archadian dungeons himself, in order to get answers on this mess.

Basch cared not for curses, pirate Quidion, or the superstitions of an erratic, (quite possibly mad) former sky pirate, but he would be damned if he would stand by and let Ashe be widowed once more because of some manner of ill-deed Balthier had committed in his less than noble past.

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_A/N: Hmm, I've never written from Basch's view point before and wanted to try it...not overly satisfied, I have to say...oh, well, them's the breaks ;)_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven: The power of total recall and the problems of a lack thereof**

_A/N: twenty-five reviews for six chapters; I am so very, very grateful to everyone reading and reviewing. ;)_

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On a good day (which this most certainly was not) Balthier was prepared to concede that on the odd, rare occasion, he was somewhat lacking in forethought. On a bad day, such as this, Balthier silently and vociferously berated himself as a reckless fool.

Really there were times when he wondered if all those strikes to the noggin he had received in the advent of living his convoluted (but exciting) life had in fact addled his wits irrevocably.

The debacle in the mashes being a case in point; what had he been thinking trying to lure his unknown assailants (which he was not sure he had until they chose to 'assail' him) into a open plain wherein the only means of defence against unknown danger he possessed was a sanctimonious Landissian and a spade.

With a lack of forethought like that Balthier would also be drawn to question his own sanity. It was just as well he had garnered valuable intelligence on the……hmm, on the…well, on whatever it was that he had needed valuable intelligence on.

How odd, but Balthier found himself strangely unable to grasp and hold onto coherent thought as Basch started the small fishing boat's engine and Balthier curled up, miserable and nauseous, on the bottom of the boat.

He had the terrible feeling he was forgetting something as it seemed with each rock and dip of the little boat through the water some invaluable knowledge and insight shook loose from its moorings inside his brain and drifted, like flotsam and jetsam, into the growing void of his mind.

Time passed and something altogether more precious was taken from Balthier in its passing, though he noted its loss only in the vaguest of senses.

The journey back to Archades drifted by in a pained blur for Balthier; he lay in the bottom of the boat, cheek against the rough wood and the entirety of his being was taken up in merely avoiding the unfortunate embarrassment of purging the contents of his stomach all over the bottom of the boat.

Well, not the entirety of his being precisely, some small portion of his mind was taken up with the worrisome concern that….well….in the frankest of terms, he had no idea where he was, precisely who he was, or, most pressingly, who the large, blonde man at the boat's tiller was.

This was disturbing for an number of reasons; first and foremost because, if he did not know who this scarred, alarmingly strong, man was he could not begin to guess what purpose he had in being in this boat in the first place, and secondly, because he had the ticklish perception that he _should_ know who the man was.

This was not good at all.

'Balthier are you awake? We must make haste for the Imperial Palace.'

Balthier watched the other man speak, analysed the cadence of the man's accent (familiar, definitely familiar) and studied the man. His broadly pleasant but straightforward features, the clear blue eyes and the scarred brow, induced in Balthier a sense of familiarity mingled with mild irritation.

Evidently he did know this man and yet his mind felt shrouded in cotton wool. He knew the man before him but could not recall from where or in what context. It would help if he could dredge the man's name from the sudden heavy morass of his disordered mind.

The blonde man reached down to pull on his arm and Balthier recoiled instinctively, sizing up the other man as he lurched into a sitting position in the boat and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

'Unhand me,' he demanded in cool, calm, commanding voice because it would not do to show either fear or nervousness when dealing with a possibly hostile aggressor, especially when Balthier had no idea where he was or _why_ he happened to be wherever it was that he was, at present.

The blonde man reacted to his command by carefully releasing his grip on Balthier's arm and studying him critically. 'Balthier are you well, what ails you?'

Balthier did not respond, racking his brain feverishly for the man's name. He was certain that he knew this man's name; that this man, if not a friend as such (but then Balthier had never had much interest in acquiring those, of this he was certain) was at least not his natural enemy.

What was the damned blonde brute's name?

It was an unfortunate name, if he was not mistaken; something unpleasant and coarse sounding, vaguely reminiscent of the sound of blunt instruments striking heavy surfaces, or at least that was the confused impression Balthier had.

Bash? No, no-one would ever be called bash.

Bish? Bang? Wallop….no, no, no…and that last one was just ridiculous, as Balthier scolded his fragmented psyche. What was the damned man's name?

The man was staring at him, and Balthier was uncomfortably aware that the silence between them was growing increasingly perplexed, if he did not say something swiftly the other man would realise something was amiss.

Bash – the word sounded almost right – elongate the beginning syllable, the 'Sh' on the end needed to be harder, harsher…..Bash – sch, Booosch, no, but close, that was close…..what was it now, he's staring…….

'…._Basch_…..Basch Fon Ronsenberg…'

The other man's eyebrows rose in something like inquiry, 'Aye, what is it?'

Aha! Success, he had the man's name and half the battle was won. Yet the man was still staring at him askance and expecting some form of answer.

Hmm, it was called upon for Balthier to say something more, but anything he said, his mind an almost blank slate, could tip the other man off to his current predicament.

'We go to the Imperial Palace?' Balthier queried cautiously.

'Aye, we do.' Basch (and Balthier intended to think the name every few seconds so as to retain the knowledge) helped him to his feet and they disembarked the boat at the mooring post that was, Balthier realised, part of the private docks of the Palace enclosure.

Why it was that Balthier could remember the sight of the small quay that served as the docking bay for most of the waterborne produce and supplies needed for the Palace, but found himself unable to recall where precisely he lived or exactly what year it was, was beyond him.

'And we have an appointment at the Palace I take it?'

Balthier could not imagine that anyone could simply walk into the Palace whenever they so chose, yet, something in him whispered that the usual rules did not apply to men like himself and this Basch Fon Ronsenberg.

Once more Basch was studying Balthier critically, 'Balthier you are not yourself,' the other man informed him rather suspiciously and Balthier (completely uncharacteristically, though he knew it not) burst out laughing.

In fact, the sudden out-pouring of near hysterical mirth staggered him and he tottered almost drunkenly over to one of the mooring posts on the wood dock and leaned against it as he tried, unsuccessfully, to gather what sparse wits remained to him.

Basch Fon Ronsenberg was staring at him with an expression of acute surprise and suspicion upon his features. Although it hardly helped his cause, nor furthered his attempts to hide his current unfortunate lack of well – _self_ –Balthier found the expression highly comically.

He doubled up with laughter once more. He had the nagging feeling that it had been sometime since he'd given way to laughter with such abandon.

Which, Balthier mused, from the obscure vantage point of having forgotten who he was, seemed a terrible shame. Laughter was the food of the soul. His father (whoever he was) had always said as much and Balthier suspected that he must be (when he was himself) a rather dry stick to have spent so little time laughing at the absurdity of life.

If one could not laugh when one found himself suddenly bereft of most of his memory then, really, he did not possess very much of a sense of humour, Balthier decided right then and there.

Finally able to regain his equilibrium and feeling marginally better for having released the tension and confusion in laughter, Balthier straightened up and tugged slightly self-consciously on his cuffs.

'Ahem, apologies, I am….um,' Balthier was more than a tad disconcerted by the look of staggered incredulity Basch Fon Ronsenberg was giving him, 'that is to say, shall we go?'

Balthier smiled politely at the man, Basch Fon Ronsenberg (and he was making extreme effort to remember that name; his brain felt like a large rusty bucket with a hole in the bottom at this moment) until the other man grunted suspiciously and turned to lead the way up along the dock towards the service entry to the Palace.

'The Wards and securities appear dormant; I hear no sirens or the like, this is a good sign. I trust that we will find Penelo and Larsa in good health.'

Balthier suppressed the bubble of panic (and still present hysteria) that threatened to overwhelm him and nodded his head in agreement with Basch's statement. He hoped that his expression and stance portrayed the right amount of confidence and understanding. Though in truth Balthier had not the slightest inkling as to whom or what Basch referred too.

Who in the gods names were Penelo and Larsa and why were he and Basch concerned for their general health?

Balthier was fairly certain he was not, in fact, a physician of any sort and frankly would question the qualification standards for the practicing of medicine if a man such as Basch Fon Ronsenberg came to his bedside with the intent of administering some manner of physik to him.

Thankfully keeping his mouth shut and his countenance bland seemed to have worked as hoped and Basch did not detect any of Balthier's mounting confusion.

Instead the man used a personalised Chop to open the service doors leading to the cargo holds and above ground cellars of the Palace, and strode with nonchalant surety through the maze of servants corridors criss-crossing back and forth through the lower levels of the Palace Imperial.

Balthier began to develop a vague respect and curiosity towards this Basch Fon Ronsenberg, as he marched confidently through the corridors of Imperial power with the ease of a man strolling through his own home.

Balthier kept his eyes straight ahead to avoid giving himself away by rubber-necking at the finery all around him (and suppressing the rather concerning desire bubbling inside him to pilfer the gold and platinum knick-knacks left unguarded on far too many shelves and end-tables as they walked through the corridors).

'Your Honour Fon Ronsenberg, Master Bunansa, what brings you both to the Palace? Is his Lordship expecting you?'

A bright faced and obeisant young man in the red and black livery of House Solidor bobbed up in front of Basch as the man strode through the aquamarine and gold corridor with the wide window embrasures and huge portraits lining the walls.

Balthier, following on Basch's heels, vaguely wondered who 'Master Bunansa' was and why the name rang distant bells in the echoing vacant caverns his mind had now become.

Having no idea how to address this attendant without giving away the fact that he essentially had no idea on very much of anything at the present time, Balthier looked expectantly at Basch, hoping the man who actually knew what business they had here would dispense with the cheerfully and inanely helpful little man swiftly.

'Tell me is the Lady Penelo in residence?' Basch seemingly growled, his powerfully muscular body growing tense and a demeanour of restrained aggression and gruff surety replacing his more staid and relaxed stance of moments before.

Which was all very interesting…..but not immensely enlightening.

The liveried page bobbed in an almost bow, 'Indeed your Honour Fon Ronsenberg; her ladyship and his lordship are in their private quarters, should I announce you both?'

Balthier had lost interest in the answer the page gave rather quickly (though he noted that this 'Penelo' was clearly of high rank in Archadian society to be ensconced with the Emperor…or a 'Lordship' of some description at any rate), instead Balthier had taken the time to study, with an avaricious eye, the enormous crystal chandelier hanging from the high rafters of the corridor.

The conversation between Basch and the page had clearly moved on in the interim, Balthier was distracted from his mental count of the number of opals, peridot and emeralds he could see set into the silver of the chandelier by Basch pointedly clearing his throat.

Balthier turned mildly back to face the page and Basch who were both giving him very suspect looks (though in truth Balthier was growing inured to them, he had received so many from Basch in such a short period of time already that he barely responded to any other form of facial expression).

'Hmm, oh, sorry, were you speaking to me?'

Basch shook his head but said nothing in regards to Balthier's peculiar behaviour. The page averted his eyes altogether lest they give him away in front of two prominent and important personages.

'It appears that you were mistaken Balthier; Penelo is perfectly well and there have been no attempts on the security of the Palace. The attack we experienced earlier must have come from a different source than the one you previous prescribed.'

Balthier blinked, Basch was clearly waiting for him to say something in response to that frankly incomprehensible statement. There was an attack; on whom, in what manner, and perpetrated by whom and why would he and Basch worry over Palace security; not to mention what was the 'source' that Balthier had previously 'prescribed'?

Clearly asking any of those pertinent questions would simply reveal that he did not have answers he evidently should have and so Balthier found himself at a loss for words.

Basch (and to a lesser extent the page) was still clearly expecting him to say or respond in some manner, however, and so, with little else he could do, Balthier shrugged awkwardly and gave the other man a vague smile.

'Well, one cannot be right all the time, I suppose.' He replied with cheerful lack of rancour that revealed more of his current out-of-sorts disposition than Balthier could possibly realise at present, 'If all is well does that mean our business here is concluded?'

Basch narrowed his eyes sceptically for a moment and then turned to the page, 'We would request an immediate audience with the Emperor and Lady Penelo. It is a matter of some urgency.' Basch paused for just a moment, 'And if you could summon a Palace physician that also would be appreciated.'

Basch looked keenly at Balthier, who, so far out of his depth (having, in fact, lost much of the depth of his character somewhere between the marshes and here) failed to catch the subtext in any way, shape, or form and just looked back at the other man vacantly.

The page bobbed his head and then rather shrewdly turned to face Balthier, 'I shall go right away your honour, but should I announce the presence of the Dalmascan Queen's consort as well, or is this not an official visit?' the man actually winked at a confused Balthier.

Balthier stared at the man, 'Is there something wrong with your eye?' he queried eventually as the page continued to leer at him in unbecoming fashion.

The page looked startled out of his leer for a moment, 'I – no sir,' the man took a hesitant step back and wiped hands over the red bib on the front of his black livery, 'I'll inform the Emperor you are here.'

Without further ado the little man dashed off through the guarded doors at the end of the overwrought, gold leafed, corridor which led on to the inner, private, domain of the Archadian Emperor.

Balthier turned back to Basch to find the man once again staring at him as if trying to bore his gaze right through Balthier's flesh and blood to what lurked within (which Balthier could have told him was futile, as apparently there was not much left within him to expose to scrutiny).

'Something wrong?' Balthier challenged mildly.

It was a blasted foolish thing to do, considering he damned good and well knew there was something rather acutely wrong with him and was rather desperately hoping Basch didn't, but it seemed natural for him to push his luck when he had very little of it to spare.

Basch raised both eyebrows ironically, or at least Balthier assumed he was attempting ironic reflection, though the expression did not sit well upon the man's broad, simple features.

'Aye,' the other man murmured meditatively, 'I think there may well be.'

Balthier had too much sense to fall into so obvious a verbal trap and did not rise to the bait and ask what that problem might be. Instead he and Basch stood in silence for a few dull moments as they waited for someone to escort them into the presence of the Emperor and this 'Penelo' person, whoever she might be.

'Tell me Balthier,' Basch began so naturally, so conversationally, that Balthier turned to face him before he registered the inherent danger in that one leading statement and could guard himself against it, 'Have you made plans yet for the twins fifth birthday?'

For one agonised second Balthier's expression proved a mirror for his inner state; blank, uncomprehending, scraped clean of recognition, understanding and anything save for a manner of detached, bemused befuddlement.

It was enough for Basch whose eyes widened almost imperceptibly as his vague suspicions were confirmed beyond his worst fears.

'Good gods man, tell me you jest.'

Balthier was barely listening as a roaring white panic filled his ears and blanketed the raided, empty, chambers of his mind, his character, his life, and joy.

Twins?

As the full force of awareness of his _lack_ of awareness hit him, without the buffer of shock and daze to muffle the gut-churning terror of finding himself without a sense of self, Balthier rocked on his heels and brushed shaking fingers against his brow. Basch reached out to steady him with one hand against his arm.

'Balthier, tell me their names; tell me you remember the names of your own children.'

Balthier lifted his gaze to meet Basch's demanding eyes, his vision swirling with confusion and a persistent pain, like the blows of a hammer pounding within his skull. He shook his head mutely.

Basch looked appalled and Balthier would have looked equally aghast had he not been suddenly afflicted with sharp, brilliant kaleidoscope swirls of pain behind his eyelids as he tried, desperately, to dredge up some scrap of memory in the chasm of his now blank mind.

Basch kept him standing as Balthier began to succumb to the pain behind his eyes. 'You must remember something, man, tell me the name of your wife; give me her name.'

Basch's voice was growing distant as pain thundered through Balthier's entire being; thumping, pounding pain. Coruscating lights like those found in the hearts of glaciers danced and tore at his ravaged mind as he tried without success to remember anything at all.

Tell me the name of your wife, and the names of your children, Basch had demanded of him, but Balthier could do neither for he had no recollection of having either wife or children.

He did not remember, could not remember, and the realisation that he had been robbed of everything that made his life meaningful sent Balthier whirling into a pit of dark, screaming, terror so perfect and complete it destroyed awareness of all else.

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_A/N: hehehe...anyone who says they haven't secretly wanted to play with the greatest dramatic cliché in history is lying...Amnesia, y'gotta love it!_


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight: Elza**

The fires of Balfonheim port burned down to nothing more than damp piles of miserably smouldering heaps of slag and ash in varying shades of grey, black and brown.

Despite the fact that over half of the permanent brick and mortar buildings making up the port had been demolished by the Phoenix's cannonade fire very few of the denizens of the still active port seemed to notice.

Balfonheim was a habitat of transients, nothing in the settlement was supposed to be permanent or secure or long-lasting; this description, this vocation of purpose, extended beyond the architecture to the people as well.

They were all transient; constantly moving on, moving away, working and grifting their way towards an undoubtedly early grave. If a man or woman from Balfonheim bay was laid to rest with his own headstone and burial plot to his name he was considered something of an oddity; not to mention a rare success.

Balfonheim was the place where the lost, the luckless, the footloose and the banished resided; not a one of them would ever call the damned place home, but they'd die to preserve just a little patch of the place that they might call, at least for a time, their own.

Balfonheim port had not been built, or founded, by pirates, but it had proved to be the perfect nesting ground for the breed.

Elza (not her name, not even close, but then she barely remembered what others had once called her) had never particularly wished for freedom upon the open ocean nor sailing through the skies.

Not for her the dream of one day making of herself a legend, a parable of daring-do and intrigue. Elza, one of thirteen children of which only she survived, had never had the luxury of such lofty aspirations.

Thus being pirate was not so much the pinnacle of a dream of freedom but merely another title afforded her by those who have wealth and little need of freedom.

Once upon a time living to see the touch of dawn, rosy and gold on the frosted horizon, was all Elza aspired too.

Life had not changed dramatically in the intervening years. In truth all that had changed was the scenery.

The coin in her hand was heavy and uneven, roughly circular and faintly rusted; the Quidion of Fidelity, fourth of six named coins in the Aspera cache.

Elza had been there, all those years ago, when Aeneas had died.

She'd watched Balthier lightly touch the nose of his rifle against Aeneas' right temple, almost like a tap of benediction from a monarch. She remembered that Balthier had, for once, had nothing whatsoever to say.

No one had anything to say, not Elza, not Rikken or Raz, nor Fran, who was almost always silent anyway. The only person who had seemed even remotely at ease on that windy, cold cliff face, knee deep in the Steppe grass, was Aeneas himself.

Aeneas had smiled when Balthier thumbed back the trigger.

Elza fancied that his smile, the famous smile of the master of hearts, had flown right off his face as the rifle blast stole his beauty, and flown through the air towards her as Aeneas fell sideways, with nary a sound, dead.

His smile had hit her face along with the hot kiss of his blood and tissue and Elza had raised not a finger to wipe away the gore; no one had, all standing like ancient monoliths, painted in a fallen comrades blood.

Five weeks later Elza miscarried; Aeneas had never even known the babe was his. Two weeks after that Rikken told her that she must now carry the Quidion Fidelity and he, though he was not worthy, would carry the Quidion of Heart, Aeneas' coin.

Four weeks after that, after each of those who had been on the cliff took up a coin, saving Fran who reserved the right of age and difference to bare only the duty of one of the six Balances, the Empire, poised above and all around Balfonheim, declared war on Dalmasca and annihilated Nabudis.

That the two seismic events were intrinsically linked barely needed recording in thought; such things always went hand in hand.

It had come as no surprise to Elza. It was the way of things; war and death, betrayal that was not betrayal, and cold-blooded murder disguising an act of agonising charity as one man shot dead a dear friend.

That was the life of a pirate; a cycle of betrayal and fidelity to ones partner, love tangled and entwined with the cold, heartless pursuit of wealth, the mind's will exerting control over the heart's desire, and the artifice disguising the truths absolute that guided them all.

Heart and mind, truth and artifice, betrayal and fidelity; the six named coins of the Quidion of Aspera. The coins of the Lords Pirate; those who knew what it was to live, and what it was to dance through existence engaged in all of those six vices and virtues.

The curse of pirate-kind and now the Phoenix rose once more and the seventh named coin of Aspera, the Arbiter, was, come the dawn, to be found missing.

Elza uncurled the fingers of her left hand and looked down into her palm. The two coins held therein clinked together dully; the surface of one a dim and tarnished gold, the other smeared with a thin patina of fresh blood.

For the first time in twelve years Elza relinquished her hold on the coin of Fidelity and placed it, with a reverence touched with the faintest hint of love, on the unmoving chest of her decade long partner.

Rikken looked as if he was merely sleeping, except that he had never slept so soundly.

Over Rikken's heart, still and quiet now, she delicately arranged Fidelity underneath the coin of Heart and folded Rikken's arms over his chest to guard those coins in death.

She leaned over his body, relaxed in death and too close to its lost life to bear the stench and indignity that death granted all flesh sooner or later, and gently brushed her mouth against his own cold lips.

The coin of Betrayal heavy and hot in her clenched left fist cut into her palm in silent indictment of her actions; but this was not a betrayal. This was merely an ending fit for a pirate.

The seaman and dockhands working the quay when Elza left the upstairs flat above Beruny's armourers did not spare the time from unloading the ships and storing the wares to notice Elza.

What was one more person in transition in this settlement of the transient?

It did not take long to reach the grassy bluff that jutted out from the windmill dotted plain of the Cerobi Steppes where once, long moons past, she had watched her lover die with a smile on his face.

The bandercouerls raised their bulbous heads in drowsy menace from a sleeping pile of green twinned limbs under the shade of one of the trees, but no other living being stirred as Elza passed by.

The stiff, salt-laden breeze pushed against her as she toed the edge of the steep drop, looking down on a blurred sprawl of undulating greenery that spread in tiered clefts from below this central precipice.

The rising sun was obscured from view by the blackened silhouette of a large, majestic, airship, which hovered in the dawn sky like a gigantic wyvern, wings outstretched and glossair engines silent as the grave.

Elza looked boldly straight into the burning eye of the dawning sun to the dark hume-made bird of prey that dominated her horizon.

Between thumb and forefinger she held aloft the thirteenth Aspera, the Arbiter Coin of Kings and watched the quicksilver reflection of the burgeoning sun danced upon the pitted, dulled surface.

Without a word, without a single gesture to forewarn of her intention, Elza stepped simply, and without undue drama, off the cliff edge.

She fell soundlessly.

The sun rose and dawn's light bathed the smouldering ruins of Balfonheim port, gliding over the ridges and valleys of the Cerobi Steppes and trailing fingers of light through the tawny golden-brown mane of Elza's hair where she lay, still and silent, eyes open to the dawn's light, at the bottom of the Steppe.

The Arbiter coin winked in the light, sparking and glimmering in such a way that it seemed almost as if the simple rounded piece of old gold gilded silver sought to draw attention to itself.

Slowly the Phoenix descended to land, a bird of prey circling a lone Hume body, the spirit already moved on, ever restless, ever transient.

The Phoenix's shadow obscured the body from the sun's view, eclipsing dawn in unnatural dark. When the shadow lifted, with a whisper of glossair and the faint whiff of metallic parts, the body was exactly where it had fallen but the coin was gone.

The sunlight shifted as the shadows bore the rigours of ever shifting time and, much like everything else in Balfonheim, the body that was once known only as Elza, vanished, stolen away by the creatures of the Steppes. Thus it was that she who had once been Elza underwent another transition.

No-one much noticed; it was the way of things in Balfonheim. Ultimately all flesh is grass.

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_A/N:…….hmm, the plot thickens, not that it needed to get any more complicated, and now, to top it all, I'm killing auxiliary characters too! ;)_


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine: What you don't know can bloody well hurt you**

_A/N: Sigh….Exposition, a necessary evil, sorry people I'll get back to random killings and daring-do shortly, I promise! ;)_

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'If you would extend your tongue, please, sir.'

Balthier arched an eyebrow at the officious physician and merely stared at the man, 'There is nothing wrong with my tongue.'

The physician, garbed in the red and black of a Solidor adherent, a man with watery blue eyes and a balding pate smiled thinly, 'I'll be the judge of that sir, tongue please.'

Balthier turned his head to glance at Basch and the two people behind him, 'Are you going to remove this man or shall I?' he enquired with strained civility.

He had been fully conscious and lucid some twenty minutes and had just this moment lost patience with the doctor who had tapped, poked and prodded at him while making irritating little 'ahhing' noises in the back of his throat from the first moment Balthier fluttered his eyes open.

'Now, Master Bunansa, you have suffered some manner of Magio-neurological trauma, I would suggest that you co-operate so that I may continue with my examination. You don't want me to have to restrain you, do you?'

The Physician, whose name Balthier had not bothered to enquire of, tapped the rounded end of his stethoscope against his hand, voice dripping benign condescension.

Balthier smiled; it was not a nice smile, 'I'd fain to see you try,' he murmured looking down on the diminutive little man in the manner of a Wary Wolf looking upon a tasty morsel.

Basch cleared his throat and stepped forward swiftly, 'Dr Englemoss, have you determined the cause of Balthier's current lack of recollection?' he interceded as the little man took a hasty step back from Balthier.

'Well,' the man took out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped at his perspiring brow.

'I would surmise that he has been afflicted with some manner of spell, perhaps a variant of a confusion spell combined with the Berserk affliction. This has apparently affected his memory both long term and short term, though the effect is incomplete and may prove to be temporary.'

'Indeed,' Balthier purred, 'Tell me, precisely how many years has it taken you to perfect the art of stating the bloody obvious?'

'Balthier,'

He turned his head from the annoying little man to the young woman who had chided him. 'Hmm?'

She was a woman of middling height with a fall of pale yellow hair and wide set clear blue eyes. Her face was round and sweet and her mouth made for smiling. She was a comely girl, without a doubt, but not one Balthier would have imagined as the Empress-consort of Archadia.

The young woman - Penelo – stepped over to him and took his arm, pulling him towards the brocade sofa and inducing him to sit down, while she pushed a glass of ice water into his hands. 'Balthier you are not helping. Dr Englemoss is only trying to help you.'

He quirked an eyebrow, wondering why it was this girl felt that she could treat him like a naughty child and why it was that he felt a vague sense of indulgent tolerance for her.

'Is that so? Alas he is failing miserably in that case because despite his varied ministrations I still have no idea who I am, from whence I come, or why someone saw fit to steal from me the accumulation of a lifetime's memory.'

Penelo's face shaded into consternation and worry as she crouched down before him, 'I know Balthier, I am sorry, but I promise we'll fix it.'

'Bah,' he muttered, ill-spiritedly, and turned his face away to stare at the book shelf lined wall of the Emperor's private study.

While Penelo had been pacifying Balthier Basch had dismissed the disgruntled physician. He now strode back into the room and regarded the amnesiac Balthier before addressing Penelo and, the up until now, thoughtfully silent Emperor.

'You say that two people bearing the guise of Balthier and Fran came to you earlier this day and requested the Quidion of Truth?'

Penelo nodded, 'Yes, I swear Basch I thought it was them; the man sounded like Balthier and walked like him and everything.'

'He also knew of the coin, which I certainly did not,' Larsa added with something close to a slightly askance glance towards Penelo's back.

Penelo did not turn to face him but Balthier saw a flicker of annoyance tinged with guilt pass over her pretty features, 'It was supposed to be a secret; Vaan didn't even know I had the Truth coin.'

Balthier was frowning having ignored much of the exchange between the Imperial couple, the tribulations of their married life did not interest him, instead something Basch had said had struck him and he was chasing down the slight twitch of recollection.

'Fran?'

'Yes Balthier she is…' Penelo began but Balthier impatiently waved her off. He closed his eyes and pushed against the echoing emptiness inside his mind that felt more like a wall of shadow than a genuine absence. 'I _know_ who Fran is.'

He did know; a sense of deep affection and respect and understanding, a staggering depth of shared experience, that he did not remember but could taste on the back of his tongue, remained tantalisingly out of reach.

He knew everything he could not remember was there, somewhere in the recesses of his consciousness, but he could not access it.

'Balthier, you remember Fran?' with his eyes still closed he felt Penelo reach out to squeeze his knee in her excitement. She seemed to be a rather tactile person; Balthier was not sure he appreciated that aspect of her character.

He shook his head irritated, 'No, not precisely, I cannot recall her face or her voice, I don't know how I know, but _I do know her_.'

He opened his eyes abruptly and glared at everyone present in the room with equal measure, 'This is ridiculous; magick cannot do this. This should not be possible.'

Larsa Solidor stepped forward and all eyes were drawn to him instinctively, the young man possessing a natural, understated, charisma that drew the eye.

To Balthier, who did not remember that he had known this young man as a boy of twelve, Larsa was merely a tall, elegantly lean young man with a shock of deepest black hair and very blue eyes; those eyes currently burned with thought and consideration.

'I cannot claim to know anything about these Quidion, or this curse Basch referred to, nor am I an expert in magick, but I have a - hypothesis – if you are willing to hear it?'

Balthier was not feeling particularly charitable, he waved his hand indifferently, 'It is not as though I have anything more pressing to do,' he winced, 'at least not that I know of.' He added grimly.

Larsa was not offended by this less than enthusiastic response in fact he found it rather amusing, 'I thank you for your indulgence, then.' He demurred dryly, glancing at Penelo and Basch who were waiting for his theory.

'From what Basch has told us, while you were unconscious, you, Balthier, likely knew all about these coins, the curse, and this Aeneas man. Perhaps this spell, a 'divining spell' as you yourself called it, was designed to rob you of this knowledge so that you could not stop whatever this rogue sky pirate intends to do next?'

Balthier studied the young Emperor thoughtfully, 'I will have to take your word for it that I possessed all this knowledge, or the means to prevent any nefarious actions by this Aeneas, but I wonder then why it is I have lost all my memories, and not merely those pertaining to this cursed coin?'

Larsa nodded, clearly having a theory for this as well and eager to impart it, 'I had considered this, and it seems to me that memory is not separate to a sense of self, perhaps it was not possible to extract only that specific information and instead they stripped you of awareness of yourself to render you incapable of further action.'

Balthier sat back against the sofa, crossed his arms over his chest and stretched out his long legs crossing his ankles one over the other. He arched both brows, 'Perhaps it would be pertinent for someone to explain to me precisely _who_ I am, as clearly I am a man of,' Balthier paused considering, 'less than ordinary disposition.'

Basch cleared his throat abruptly, covering his mouth with his hand. Balthier narrowed his eyes at him; he had the suspicion the other man was _laughing_ at him. Penelo and Larsa exchanged a slightly dumbfounded and alarmed expression, neither seeming to know quite how to deal with this request for clarity.

'Um, you could definitely say that, Balthier,' Penelo admitted awkwardly, then suddenly and incongruously she grinned, 'You definitely aren't what anyone would call 'ordinary' that's for sure.'

Balthier was beginning to develop the sinking suspicion that he was not going to like what he was about to hear.

He shifted in his lounging sprawl across the sofa and eyed the young woman warily, 'Tell me,' he sighed, 'I imagine I shall need to know, though I am beginning to suspect I might prefer to maintain my ignorance.'

Penelo nibbled on her lower lip, Basch pointedly studied the large floral print of the wall to wall carpeting and so it fell to Larsa, arguably the most objective of the three, to give Balthier a synopsis of all his known acts and dealings for the last decade.

When he was finished, and it took some time, even with Balthier silent throughout the retelling, stunned silence reigned for a number of awkward minutes; after which time Balthier blinked once, twice, and then thrice slowly.

'Let me make sure I have heard you correctly,' Balthier said with slow and deliberate steadiness.

'Not only am I, in fact, an unrepentant criminal, a bloody sky pirate no less, but I am also guilty of patricide, high treason on more than one occasion, any number of unlawful killings, countless acts of duplicity, two frankly suicidal and foolish acts upon a sky fortress, whatever one of those is, but beyond all that,' Balthier took in a deep breath, trying to steady himself, he shook his head, words failing him, and rose from the sofa to walk off his conflicting emotion.

Balthier did not realise it but he was tugging on his cuffs with ferocious, plucking fingers as he paced a tight circle over the thick carpeting in a display of uncharacteristic agitation.

He took another deep, cleansing breath and tried to frame his thoughts coherently once more.

'Aside from any number of other questionable and morally dubious actions, I also appear to be a man who has so little respect for his compeers that I cannot tell you frankly, and in straight forward manner, information that might prove to be the difference between life and death, correct?'

Basch cleared his throat, 'Aye, that about sums it up.'

'Basch,' Penelo stepped over and smacked him lightly on the arm in gentle reproof, then she moved over to Balthier, 'It really isn't as bad as all that. We all know you have your reasons for doing the things you do and a lot of times it saves lives; we trust you.'

Balthier gave her a witheringly incredulous look of contempt and pulled free of her comforting hold on his arm. If what she said was true, and not merely soothing platitudes, then he sincerely questioned the Empress' faculties if she could trust a man such as he appeared to be. 'And you say I married a Queen?'

Penelo smiled and nodded, 'Ashe,'

Balthier looked over at Basch and Larsa, 'And no one, either in this Dalmasca, or anywhere else, saw a concern over a wanted felon joined in holy matrimony to a political leader of Ivalice, hmm?'

Penelo shuffled her feet a little uncomfortably, 'Well Ashe had you arrested and put on trial first, and the people of Dalmasca acquitted you,' she glanced at Larsa with a smile, 'And the Archadian Judiciary erased your criminal record and withdrew your warrant for arrest after you helped stop an assassination attempt on Larsa's life.'

'Ah, well, that explains everything then.' Balthier closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten in his head.

He had half a mind to discount everything these three people had told him as the worst abuses of fiction, except that no one would fabricate something this ridiculous.

None of his supposed friends and allies seemed to know quite how to console Balthier as he was forced to face up to the faults and inexplicable eccentricities of his character. Perhaps losing all knowledge of himself was a blessing in disguise after all?

'Very well,' He stated firmly gaining control of what faculty of mind remained to him and addressing the other three in the room with something resembling his usual calm incisiveness, 'Let us assume his lordship is correct and I am a victim of a memory theft devised to prevent me from foiling some manner of plot. What we need to discern is how and why this happened.'

Penelo twisted her fingers together as she thought, 'Rikken gave me the Truth coin, I told him I wasn't really a sky pirate but he insisted I have it because he told me you,' she looked at Balthier, 'had the Quidion of Artifice and that Truth was its pairing coin.'

'Pairing coin?' Larsa queried before Balthier had the chance.

Penelo nodded, 'Yes, there are six coins with pictures on them; Rikken told me that they fit together as three pairs, Truth and Artifice, Fidelity and Betrayal, Heart and Mind. Rikken said that he and Elza had the Heart and Fidelity coins but that Betrayal and Mind had been lost and the only other active coin was Artifice.'

Penelo cast her gaze furtively onto the carpeted flooring as if suddenly uncomfortable and unwilling to go on. Balthier, for no discernible reason, suspected he knew what she seemed so unwilling to say. A faint smile ghosted over his lips.

'Let me guess, these paired coins are supposed to act as counterweights to each other and this Rikken character did not trust me to have a coin without a countermeasure in place, hmm?'

Penelo looked up, face a mask of guilty surprise, 'Yes, I mean, no, I mean, well, he just thought that it would be best if someone close to you happened to have the other coin, and well, no one would trust Vaan with anything valuable and Fran had already refused to have a name coin.'

Balthier was only vaguely listening, his mind might be empty, but this simply increased the speed with which correlations could be drawn between transposing information and likely conclusions drawn within his mind.

'What does the coin of Artifice do, precisely?' he glanced up at Penelo as he once again reclined against the sofa, 'I assume that each of the Coins has some equally nasty curse attached to it, much like the Quidion of Truth, perhaps related to the coins name?'

Penelo shook her head, 'I don't know. I didn't even know the coin I had did anything until you both came in. I just thought they were pirate relics,' she shrugged with a certain amount of chagrin. 'I really should have known better.'

Larsa had his head bowed in thought then he looked up with a quick and eager smile.

'Ah, I see where you are going with this, Balthier. Two people came to Penelo earlier this day appearing to be yourself and Fran, but evidently this was some manner of disguise,' he looked at each of the other people in the room in turn, eyes glittering, 'an _artifice _if you will, perhaps suggesting that the coin of Artifice can create physical illusions?'

Larsa drummed his fingers against the smooth, polished surface of his desk while he thought.

'So we can surmise that these imposters, whoever they might be, have already managed to acquire the coin from Balthier before taking hold of Penelo's, thus gaining control of one of the Quidion pairs.'

Balthier might not know (or rather remember) anything of the young Emperor's character but he could not fault his deductive reasoning.

'Indeed, and we cannot verify that hypothesis because I don't remember where I kept that coin, as evidently I didn't keep it on my person for it would likely have been noticed before now.'

'Aye, I see the web of it now,' Basch grumbled, 'You are at the heart of this conspiracy Balthier, but you are now unable to tell us what truth you have, even were you willing.' Basch shook his head in obvious annoyance.

'We should make for Balfonheim; Rikken may have answers, and Balfonheim has borne the brunt of this Phoenix's aggression likely there will be answers we seek in port.'

'Hmm, you may do as you will, sir,' Balthier demurred blandly rising to his feet and brushing off his trouser legs, 'I, however, have a wife and children to meet all over again, and a life to re-familiarise myself with.'

Basch looked at him for a long moment, Balthier could garner little from the man's expression he wore placidity upon his countenance as Balthier (when he was himself) wore arrogance. It proved to be an impenetrable mask.

'People could die Balthier, if we do not discover the truth behind these coins,' Basch warned in a dark, disapproving voice.

Balthier regarded him blandly, though he felt a trickle of anger, like a half buried memory of previous grievances caused by the other man's overbearing honour, pushing at his thoughts.

'And I am hardly in a position to prevent that at present; I do not even know what this Rikken man looks like. If you are concerned, then, by all means, go ahead and visit this pirate port, I shall not stop you.'

Basch opened his mouth, features diffusing with the familiar mild anger that Balthier could invoke in him even without conscious effort, but Larsa stepped into the breach.

'Balthier has a point; he has some rudimentary memory of Fran, who aside from Balthier himself, is most likely to know the truth of the coin. Fran is also convalescing in Dalmasca, thus it makes sense to go there before Balfonheim.'

'Plus, Ashe needs to know about Balthier's…um…problem, now, before things get much worse.'

Penelo interjected swiftly and for a moment Basch, Larsa, and Penelo all took a moment to consider the ramifications and resulting pyrotechnics that would follow from Ashe's discovery that Balthier had forgotten who she was.

Very little could have made either Penelo or Larsa risk being in the vicinity of the Dalmascan Royal residence for that conversation.

Basch, who knew that honour, duty, affection and a lack of commonsense would demand he be there to assist and console Ashe, found himself dearly wishing that he had refused Fran when she asked him to follow Balthier on that fateful day in Dalmasca.

Balthier was oblivious to just what strife might await him when he arrived (for the first time, as far as he was concerned) in Dalmasca and no one else present was quite brave enough to enlighten him.

Balthier may be in ignorance but he would not discover much bliss in Dalmasca.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten: Cross and Double Cross; nothing is ever what it seems**

_A/N: (date:20__th__ June 2008): dear everybody who is reviewing…thank you all for your feedback…however I am sorry to say that I have had a computer related disaster and have lost all access to my email etc (and in fact the computer in general…stupid hard-drive virus). So I am borrowing another computer to make this update but will not be able to reply individually to your reviews or see any PM's. Please do review as I hope to be back up and running some time next week (fingers crossed) and bear with me, I promise when I am back up and running I will reply to you all!_

_In light of this calamity I am giving you a double upload ;)_

_P.S: Zaz9 Zaa0….I still intend to review Eschatos chpt 3, but obviously my computer difficulties have delayed this…please bear with me! ;)_

_P.P.S: Hello Lotus (I am shortening your name, hope you don't mind!) nice to hear from you…sorry I haven't replied to any of your reviews….once I am back up and running I will answer your 'Quidion' query…because, amazingly, there is an answer and it's not just random gibberish words!_

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The children were in lessons or, more likely, going to great lengths to evade their tutors, and for once Dalmasca appeared happy to run its own affairs. Thus Ashe found herself alone with little respite but to sit quietly in her private quarters feeling both listless and obscurely anxious.

The last four years had been some of the best she had ever known. A certain peace and tranquillity had found Ivalice; Ashe did not possess the naivety any longer to believe that it would reign eternal but she hoped that she, and Dalmasca, might see out the rest of their days in peace.

Ashe settled in the large wingback chair with the tasselled cushions and matching footrest that had been her father's and had somehow survived the war and occupation.

She had royal decrees to read and affix her signature too, she had legislation to approve, petitions to consider, a request from the treasury to approve a rise in interest rates. In short she had much to do but little inclination to do it.

Instead she sat facing the frankly enormous portrait that filled almost the entire back wall of her private parlour.

The portrait was a masterpiece, the artist a true master of his craft, the figures portrayed upon the canvas in oils and acrylics both exquisitely life-like and at the same time possessing that ethereal quality all good portraits possessed.

Painted in lavish shades and sumptuous primary hues the portrait depicted the royal family of Dalmasca in its current incarnation.

Ashe herself was depicted seated in the very chair she curled up in now, regally attired in a saffron and sunset orange gown and fitted bodice of the most exquisite silks. Heios, looking dark and adorably grave, nestled on her lap in a suit of dark blue silk with a white collar and bib. He looked up from the book in his hands, his darker features contrasting with Ashe's light colouring, the eyes inherited from his father staring boldly out of the picture.

Across the painted room the golden, embroidered draperies were detailed in extravagant, almost touchable, perfection, creating a perfect partition between Ashe and her son and Hallie and her father.

Ashe smiled ruefully as she remembered the chore it had been to entice, cajole and eventually bribe Halina into her best finery, a silver and white gown and delicate tiara, but ultimately they might as well not have bothered. Even in a formal portrait that had taken six hours of sitting for the artist to be satisfied, Hallie still managed to look both bored and almost over-flowing with boundless energy.

Ashe's daughter all but sprawled at her father's feet on the mosaic tiled floor, her face tilted up to look up at the father she worshipped as that father, looking saturnine and distant, sat rigidly and uncomfortably in the other wingback chair gazing straight out of the picture without expression, yet somehow managing to express his immense displeasure with the whole process.

For a man who had made personal vanity an art form, Balthier was extraordinarily resistant to sitting for portraits; his own sulks made Hallie appear sweet and biddable in comparison.

The portrait was a masterpiece of artistic realism; Ashe had no doubt in her mind that this picture would be admired for decades, maybe even centuries to come, and as a reflection of a royal dynasty it did its job beautifully.

As a portrait of an intimate family setting it failed abysmally, but Ashe knew this was not the artists fault; there was no way to capture in the medium of canvas and oils the multitude of secrets hidden behind the façade of family.

Ashe rubbed her fingers across her bottom lip, nibbling her inner lip as she rose from the chair and walked over to the massive canvas. She looked up into Balthier's face, as framed in acrylics and oil paint.

The last four years had been good ones, without question. Ashe had finally begun to believe that she could plan for a future without bloodshed and pain. She had become accustomed to a life of luxury (though she still trained with sword, shield and sometimes gun, every other day for no less than three hours straight).

Dalmasca's population had almost tripled since the time of the occupation and most of that growth had come since the dismantling of the former Empire of Rozzaria, many of those people had fled to Dalmasca during the Rozzarian civil war and simply chosen to remain; the west of Dalmasca on the border of the sandsea was now a densely populated patchwork of inter-connected villages and towns.

Under the rule of Ashelia Queen Dynast, as she was widely known among her people, Dalmasca had entered into a new era of productivity, wealth, growth and innovation. Her people loved her, Dalmasca's borders had never been more secure, and she had two beautiful, talented children to ensure Dalmasca's future for many years to come.

Yet all was not well with Ashe and had not been for some time.

'_Dear, highness, I am taking a quick sojourn to Archadia to exhume the body of Aeneas, should be back sometime tomorrow………_

When you had achieved everything you had ever fought for what was there to truly _live _for? When you had come into your own in the heat of battle and lived by the sword for so long, how did one maintain a sense of excitement and passion in times of peace and plenty?

…_.to that end I would appreciate it if you would hold onto this Quidion relic for me; I have a lead I would like to follow up on in Archadia and suspect that if my summations bare fruit I will have need of the particular magick possessed within the coin….._

Ashe would argue vociferously if anyone should be so audacious as to suggest to her that she was in any way dissatisfied with her state of being; she would think it despicable that anyone should be 'bored' with peace after so long at war and angrily refute that accusation against her.

Yet the truth could not be avoided; deep down inside, in a tiny part of her being that could for the most part be ignored, Ashe was drowning in an apathetic malaise that quietly ate at her.

She was twenty-eight years old, was this all that was left for her; to merely govern a country that no longer needed a protector and wait for the time she could abdicate her rule to her grown children?

Ashe studied the two painted images of the Dalmascan monarch and her consort, poles apart in acrylics and oils, and very carefully, while facing the painting, slipped a hand under the neckline of her gown and removed the flesh-warmed old coin from the padding of her undergarment.

……_if It should be the case that I return in a certain state of disrepair, I would ask that you use the coin in the manner I will relay below. I am sure you will have questions but I assure you, Highness, that everything is very much under control…._

Ashe let her gaze slip from the painting to the coin previously hidden in her cleavage, studying the worn, tarnished silver and the faded picture of a tall tower that was, for some reason she did not quite understand, supposed to represent the vice of 'Artifice'.

…_..I have already contacted Penelo should my suspicions prove correct and she will be on-hand in Archades should I need any assistance. I am not expecting any insurmountable obstacles but I will not deny a certain risk involved in this endeavour..._

Absently as she waited for something to happen, and of course, it would, something always did, Ashe tapped the warm coin against her lips.

They did not even argue anymore.

Married six years, give or take, and the passion, conflict and exuberance that had existed between she and Balthier and had culminated in the creation of two children they both loved more than life itself had slowly, gradually, almost gracefully, eroded into a sense of detached familiarity and affection that did nothing for either of them.

……_P.S kiss the children goodnight for me, would you?_

They had become functional; Balthier resided most of the time in Nalbina where he was absorbed (with his usual myopic intensity) with his Aerodrome renovation project, and Ashe remained in Rabanastre with the children flitting between the two. When she had need of him Balthier supported her either politically or merely with his presence and she, in turn, allowed him his freedom.

Ashe thought that Balthier was not unhappy any more so than she could claim to be unhappy. She thought that he was content with his engineering projects and with the company of Moogles, engineers, and inventors, that clustered about him looking either for a patron or a colleague to make their inventive dreams come true.

Still it was a far cry from the life of a wanted and notorious sky pirate. Sometimes Ashe wondered if it would not have been better to have loved him and let him go than to have acquired him and still lost him in the end.

Of course, all this introspection was merely something to do while she waited. Diplomacy required a great deal of acting…..a certain _artifice_….she and Balthier had also perfected an act within their marriage; an act that disguised the true nature of their relationship, even to each other.

In many ways this most recent crisis only served to prove this fact. Quietly and deftly Ashe slipped the coin back into its safe hiding place amid the tight boning of her corset.

She was just in time as the door to her chambers opened without the person entering bothering to knock.

Ashe turned towards the door, hand reaching for the small dagger she still kept on her person at all times. She dropped her hand when she recognised the man who entered.

'Majesty, we must talk,'

Ashe's welcoming smile slipped from her face at Basch's abstracted expression, enhanced by the fact that he had forgotten to knock upon entry which, for Basch who still treated her with the deference she insisted he did not need to observe, this one oversight spoke volumes.

'What has happened?' she demanded.

Fran had told her that she had dispatched Basch to follow Balthier, and Ashe, though less than pleased with the whole affair, had nevertheless felt somewhat mollified by this news, now however ice filled her veins in dread.

Basch walked over to her and placed both hands on her shoulders, Ashe felt her heart clench as she looked into his serious eyes.

'He is alive and physically unharmed.' Basch told her without preamble; his straight forward speech had always been one of the things she appreciated most about her former protector.

'Physically?' she queried sharply as Basch's eyes were drawn to the grand portrait he had never before seen.

Basch looked it over and shook his head with a slight smile upon his lips, 'A beautiful portrait; the artist has rendered your likeness well, Highness.'

'Basch,' that one word was enough, the old knight's eyes turned to her, a certain weary consternation the only visible emotion she could detect. She did not know whether to be relieved or even more concerned by that.

'I do not claim to understand it myself, but Balthier is the victim of some Magickal malady, the result of which appears to be a near total loss of memory,' Basch's expression bled from careful neutrality to genuine compassion, 'I am sorry Ashe.'

Ashe blinked, struggling to conceive his meaning, 'A near total loss of memory? I don't understand, what do you mean; are you saying he does not know who he is?'

Basch winced, eyes seeking refuge in the painting once more, 'That's the rub, Ashe,' he murmured grimly, 'He has some memory of his name and has lost none of his….character…..but it is the details of his life that he no longer recalls with any clarity beyond the vaguest sense of familiarity to certain people and objects.'

Ashe was acutely aware of the disk of old silver pressing against her heart. It had happened precisely as Balthier had predicted then?

Ashe could feel her breath leave her body in one gasping exhale, as she concentrated on acting the way one would if told her husband no longer remembered her or much of anything in particular. She found it quite easy, all things considered.

'How, Basch, how is such a thing possible? What manner of magick could cause such a thing and why?'

Basch sighed and gently rubbed with rough, calloused hands, her arms as he had never let go of her since taking her shoulders to break the news. 'We don't know for sure Ashe but I will tell you our suspicions.'

Ashe listened then as Basch, clearly not relishing the unpleasant duty of retelling the convoluted and uncertain details of the events of the last two days to Ashe, including the visit to Larsa and Penelo, and explained to her everything he knew and suspected about the Quidion of Aspera and the pirate Aeneas.

All the while Ashe maintained her expression of quiet, stunned shock while inside her thoughts whirled and churned.

_It has all fallen out precisely as Balthier predicted; at least I must assume that from this letter….but what in the name of the gods was he thinking? How could he have let such a thing happen? _

Ashe was startled from her thoughts by Basch deep, rumbling bass tones.

'Balthier is with Fran now; he cannot remember their years together but has enough recollection to know that she is friend and ally to him. I had thought it best to bring him quietly into the palace, it seems imprudent to make Balthier's current affliction common knowledge.'

'Yes, that is good,' Ashe agreed vaguely, barely hearing him as her mind raced over the possibilities and impossibilities of what she had been told and how she must now behave in these next, pivotal moments.

_Damn you Balthier; you and your convoluted, elaborate schemes. Why can you not do anything simply?_

She was appalled and quietly furious; this was not an act. She did not enjoy deception and she did not like using her friends and allies in such a way; especially when she herself was barely any more informed than Basch himself.

Ultimately, though she loathed to admit it, she had never known Balthier to act unless the ends justified the means and so she would merely have to content herself by ripping a strip from his hide once this whole mess had been resolved.

'I want to see him; bring him to me.' Ashe told Basch firmly, keen to get things over with and not enjoying this farcical act at all.

Basch nodded though he looked uncertain, 'Aye, I thought as much,' he sighed, 'Are you sure you are ready, Highness, do you not wish time to compose yourself?'

Ashe bit her lip on a grim smile, 'Oh, I am very composed.' she murmured quietly. Basch looked over at her somewhat quizzically and Ashe gazed back at her stalwart former protector with genuine affection and not a little sympathy; from pillar to post Basch was trapped by the machinations of a pack of rampant schemers.

'Basch would you please escort Balthier to my chamber, while ensuring that no one from the palaces meets you in transit. I do not want anyone to know about Balthier's….condition…… just yet.'

Ashe was no fool, she knew legend of her temper preceded her throughout Ivalice; she used that very character flaw to her advantage. It did not hurt to have people fear her wrath now and again in order to facilitate the smooth running of a kingdom.

However just as any of the other weapons she had mastered in her time, her anger, righteous or otherwise, was very rarely out of her control; when it did her no good she simply repressed it.

Nevertheless she did not doubt that Basch, and maybe Fran, would expect her to react with anger to the news of Balthier's mishap and would have tacitly warned Balthier of this.

Basch hesitancy to fetch Balthier to face his wife without his wits to defend him was obvious; Ashe tried to keep her expression mild and hoped that Basch would not question her too much.

Finally Basch relented, though she saw the flicker of suspicion in his regard, without a word he nodded once to her and left the room.

Ashe was left alone with her thoughts and her fast beating heart. The coin hidden against her heart felt almost too hot, the rounded, worn edges jagged and sharp as she waited for the door to open and Basch to return bringing her amnesiac husband with him.

Balthier's entrance was almost ridiculously low-key. He stepped into the room on Basch heels and looked about him with keen, sharp eyes. His ramrod straight posture was undiminished and with his head held high he did not behave like a man who has no idea who he is and has found himself adrift amid a sea of supposed allies in the guise of strangers.

However Ashe took in the tired, pale, vaguely wary expression on his face, the slightly dishevelled state of his person and the quiet, half-concealed confusion lurking in the back of his dark eyes as his gaze ticked over the details of a room he should know like the back of his own hand and in those tiny details she saw the truth.

Even though she had been expecting it, even though she had known Balthier intended to walk deliberately into an ambush knowing full well and good that this might be the result and had thus warned in the guise of a badly spelled note, Ashe was unprepared for the rush of emotion that took her as the reality of the situation hit.

She swept up towards him with only a cursory glance and nod of thanks to Basch; Ashe watched Balthier watch her with the wary caution of a man who does not know what to expect and felt her heart contract with a mixture of hurt, fear and anger that he had deliberately allowed this to happen to himself.

So much to gamble; so much to lose. How could he be so reckless with something so important? How could she have _allowed _him to do this? She should have dispatched Vaan to retrieve her wayward husband or immediately contacted Larsa as soon as she had read that damned letter.

She was as culpable in this mess as he was (maybe more as Balthier was not known for being careful with his own life and wellbeing).

Ashe rocked to a halt right before him; the flowing tail of her long jacket coat brushing against her knee-high boots as she abruptly stopped. She stood silently and allowed Balthier a moment to look at her from the silver embroidered and metal toed black-leather boots to her burnt amber skirt and the russet red of her fitted bodice and tailed coat until he eventually reached her face.

She watched his eyes flick rapidly over the contours and planes of her face, seeking out points of familiarity and, she could tell merely by watching the slight frown of consternation that bunched his brow, finding none.

Ashe bit her lip and smothered the roil of emotion within her, turning to address Basch.

'Basch, could leave Balthier and myself alone? I think this is something best dealt with in private.'

Basch shifted uncomfortably on his feet as Balthier, in an action he would never allow himself if he was in his right mind, turned to look back at Basch almost beseechingly.

Ashe smiled thinly as she noted the action, so impossibly out-of-character for Balthier to look to anyone for support (with the obvious exception of Fran) and for it to be Basch was simply laughable.

'Please Basch, this will only take a few moments and I would appreciate it if you would guard the outer chamber doors.' She spoke softly, meeting Basch's eyes and the quiet emotion in her own was utterly genuine.

Basch nodded, 'Aye, as you wish,' he acquiesced gruffly, deliberately not looking at Balthier, who followed his exit with his eyes, looking both lost and confused.

Ashe waited until she was sure that Basch had left the inner chamber and could not hear what went on between she and Balthier. Then, leashing her ever-present anger to her will with iron control, Ashe raised one hand in lightening speed and slapped an unsuspecting Balthier across the face with some considerable force.

'_You gods damned stupid pirate.' _

She hissed at him, between her teeth, unleashing her anguish in a blow that staggered the unsuspecting Balthier who half fell against the back of the wingchair. Ashe immediately seized the advantage and dug out the Quidion coin as she advanced on a startled, unprepared Balthier.

Balthier turned towards her, mouth opening to say something, perhaps to question her aggression. Ashe moved in and slipped her foot between his, sweeping his legs out from under him, knocking him off his feet onto the floor.

Balthier fell with a grunt and Ashe riding his back to the mosaic floor. Ashe straddled him on the floor and pushed the body-heated Quidion coin into the centre of Balthier's forehead, slapping her free hand across his mouth.

'Break,' Ashe whispered, repeating the word Balthier had told her, in this badly written missive, to say in order to break the spell of enforced forgetfulness on him.

She watched, riding his bucking body as Balthier's eyes widened impossibly, his pupils dilated into deep, black pits of brilliant pain. Under her restraining hand Balthier gasped in sudden, immediate agony as the coin she kept pressed to his forehead suddenly burst into an intense heat before descending to frigid cold.

Balthier's body instantly became lax, his eyes rolled up and his eyelids fluttered closed as he went still under her.

'Balthier?' Ashe removed the coin from his forehead where she had pressed it in hard enough to leave a red welt upon his brow, with shaking fingers she tapped his face, 'Balthier answer me if you can hear me.'

'Hmmmmm?'

His response was more groan than articulation but it was coupled with the return of animation to his limbs as he shifted against the cold floor tiles; his eyelids fluttered open drowsily.

He smiled faintly, his voice sounding thick, sleepy almost, '…….hm, hello Highness…'

With somnambulant familiarity he reached up with his hands and clasped her waist, eyelids at half mast and body relaxed. Ashe decided that although clearly not at optimum mental alertness, it seemed probable that the coin had worked its magick and Balthier was likely restored.

However to be on the safe side Ashe decided on a test of sorts. She slapped him once more, though not quite so hard. It was more of a love tap, though this laugh had sharp edges.

Balthier's eyes snapped open, pupils contracting to sharp, alert points of darkness in brown eyes filled with a wellspring of cynicism that seemed too deep for a man of one and thirty years; without question Balthier was himself again.

'What was that for?' Balthier pulled one hand from her waist and rubbed at his cheek, struggling to lever himself up on his elbows with Ashe still straddling his lap. He frowned as he glanced about and took in his surroundings.

He turned back to Ashe with a puzzled expression, 'And why am I flat on my back on the parlour floor?'

Ashe, struggling with a mixture of relief and frustrated anger towards him and his mad schemes, said nothing but held up the Quidion coin before his eyes.

Balthier's eyes focused on the coin catching the light before his face and lingering confusion gave way to a completely different expression. A sharp, sly smile of pure, dark triumph scythed across his face.

Balthier's hand darted out and snatched the coin from her hand. As he snagged the coin he began chuckling darkly. Taking Ashe completely by surprise he suddenly bucked underneath her and twisted around, bearing her to the ground.

Ashe found herself, abruptly, with their positions reversed, she with her back on the floor and he above her, a wicked grin of dark glee sparking in his eyes as he bore down on her, the coin held aloft between the thumb and forefinger of one hand. The light caught the coin and quicksilver sparkle flashed in her eyes, momentarily dazzling her.

Ashe squeezed her eyes closed against the glare as Balthier's richly triumphant voice purred above her, his lips dancing against her collarbone as he rolled the coin over the neckline of her gown.

'Ah, so I see my little double cross worked; everything is going precisely as planned.'


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven: Past as prelude? **

_A/N: Hello everyone this is part two of a double update, please don't miss out on the previous chapter or the important author note contained at the beginning of that chapter! ;)_

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Ashe shoved Balthier off of her and dragged herself up off the cool multi-faceted tile floor. Without looking back at Balthier she strode across the room, arms folded across her chest, and determined to put as much physical space between the two of them as the room would allow.

It had been sometime since she had been so intensely furious with another being; she felt almost light headed and sick with rage.

'You're displeased, I take it?'

Behind her back she heard Balthier laboriously haul himself to his feet and flop into one of the wingback chairs arranged in the parlour. She heard the scrap of his old boot soles across the mosaic tiled flooring as he stretched out in the chair and made himself comfortable.

Had Ashe had anything to hand at that moment she would have spun about and flung it at his head. The sound of his voice ground into her self control. Without realising it she was grinding her teeth.

Behind her back Balthier muttered something under his breath and sighed, 'You must have read my letter, Ashe, or else wise I imagine I would still be wandering about without a clue in my head, hmm?'

'I would hardly describe that scrawled collection of ill-spelt sentences on a piece of torn parchment paper left on my pillow a _letter_. Good gods, in a few years Heios will be a more competent writer than you are.'

There was a pronounced silence chasing on the heels of Ashe's scathing remarks; the brush of fabric on upholstery suggested that Balthier was fidgeting in the chair.

'So you are angry with me over poor penmanship?'

The urbane comment snapped what little restraint Ashe had been clinging onto and she spun so fast to face him that she almost over balanced herself.

'_You bastard!' _

Ashe was across the room and headed straight for him before her enraged thoughts could catch up. She stopped herself before she did something undignified and incredibly unfortunate by the narrowest of margins.

'You. Absolute. Bastard.' She snapped off each word and all but spat them at him. Her fists were clenched together so tightly her nails had left shallow crescent moon indentations in her flesh that were just beginning to fill with blood.

Balthier watched her with perfectly unruffled countenance and wary eyes. He had weathered the storm of her displeasure long enough to know that all he could do was batten down the proverbial hatches and hope to survive the onslaught relatively unscathed.

Ashe reached out and grabbed fistfuls of his cotton sleeves at shoulder level; her nails almost poking holes in the fine cloth. 'How could you be so unbelievably reckless? Basch told me how you were attacked, had he not been there anything could have happened, you imbecile.'

Balthier scowled, 'I explained all this in my letter. I needed to ascertain the rogue pirates' motives. Allowing myself to be ambushed was the only way to discover if they truly possessed my coin and if they knew of the Quidion curses.'

'And this required you to 'allow' yourself to be rendered temporarily mentally impaired, did it?'

Ashe was fighting an internal battle with herself not to haul Balthier out of the chair by his shirt and throw him across the room. Right at this moment she did not doubt that her anger would give her the strength to fulfil this action.

Either Balthier was even more deranged and indifferent of risk to his own person than she already suspected or he truly did not perceive just how lividly angry she was with him. He merely frowned petulantly and tried to pluck her hands from his shirt.

'I do not think mentally impaired is quite the right term, and you are like to ruin my shirt.'

Ashe laughed harshly shifting so that she had almost climbed into his lap while still clutching fistfuls of his shirt in each hand. She jerked him forward in the chair and pressed her face right up into his. Balthier pulled back slightly, eyes widening.

'Oh, so you do not think that allowing for your mind to be wiped of all knowledge and thus becoming helpless to further attack by unknown aggressors is a sign of mental impairment, Balthier? Tell me, if Basch had not been there what do you think your attacker might have done with you when you were completely unable to defend yourself?'

For just a moment a look of slight consternation flickered in his eyes. Ashe, who had been watching for the minute tell-tale sign of his guilt, crowed with triumph and pulled back from him slightly; the full weight of her body knelt on Balthier's legs.

'Perhaps,' Balthier shifted in the chair, his lower half pinned by Ashe's body as she crouched over him like a particularly attractive, but ferociously hungry, couerl, 'Perhaps I had not fully considered all possible consequences and ramifications of my actions.' he admitted quietly.

Ashe stared at him, no longer incandescent with rage and now feeling merely tired and dearly relieved that Fran at least had some sense to her and had made sure Balthier did not wander cheerfully oblivious into his own demise.

'Perhaps,' she repeated sardonically.

'At the very least I now know that my suspicions were well-grounded.' Balthier offered up to the uneasy silence like a peace offering.

Ashe glared at him, 'That makes nearly dying worth while does it?'

Balthier sighed and shook his head bringing his right hand up to rub at the crease in his brow above the bridge of his nose as if his head hurt. 'Do you want an explanation, Highness, or do you wish merely to harangue me some more?'

Ashe actually considered this for a moment, 'Am I like to get an explanation or merely more schemes and half-truths?'

Balthier dropped his hands where he had been massaging his temples and looked up at her sharply, 'Yes, alright,' he snapped, 'I am a manipulative and secretive bastard. Believe me Highness I have had it up to here, hearing all my numerous shortcomings given voice by my supposed allies, I do not need a repeat recital now.'

Ashe raised both eyebrows and gave him a curious, but faintly disdainful look (after all she was the one entitled to be annoyed, not him), 'Who else have you heard it from?'

Balthier scowled, 'Basch has delighted in making snide comments throughout my brief amnesia. Larsa was extraordinarily _frank_ in his recounting of my recent life history, and quite, honestly I am feeling less than happy with myself right now.'

Balthier tossed his head and made to cross his arms over his body but with Ashe positioned on his lap it proved impossible so he slapped his arms down on the chair-arms in obvious annoyance.

Ashe bit the inside of her cheek to keep her smirk from showing, 'I take it your brief spell of amnesia was illuminating in more ways than one?'

A muscle in his jaw pulsed as Balthier struggled to keep his anger and discomfort from showing on his face, 'Yes,' he snapped through gritted teeth.

Ashe, feeling gratified that Balthier had least had not escaped from his own recklessness scott-free, leaned back and waited for the explanation that was long over due. Balthier knew better than to draw out the suspense and the last of her patience.

'I had a copy of the Quidion of Artifice made almost as soon as it came into my possession. It seemed prudent, though it was no simple feat to find a mage capable of replicating the exact spell tied to the coin.' Balthier murmured with his eyes closed and his head tipped back against the back of the chair.

Ashe supposed that suddenly regaining an entire life's worth of memory and experience could not be an easy pill to swallow. Balthier looked pale and vaguely sick and she did not press him as his words faded into silence.

'That someone might build a newer version of the Phoenix is not outside the boundaries of possibility; the airship has a long and…..interesting…..history after all, even before she fell into Aeneas' hands and he renamed her.'

'Which is why you did not initially react when news of the Phoenix's raids reached your ears; you did not decide to take action until Fran was attacked.'

Ashe was growing uncomfortable and she suspected that Balthier had long since lost feeling in his legs from the weight of her knees folded atop his thighs, so she shifted slightly allowing them both greater freedom of movement.

'I did not take overt action, perhaps,' Balthier conceded tiredly, 'but I took steps, warning Penelo that someone might try and take her coin, in which case she was to surrender it rather than fight and warn me or Fran. It seemed implausible that after so many years this could happen, but I have long known the gods do jest at my expense.'

Ashe made herself comfortable sitting across Balthier's lap and dropped her head onto his shoulder. She nodded her head, friction building as her hair brushed against the plain woollen knit of Balthier's waistcoat.

'But then these rogue pirates attacked Fran and you threw caution to the wind,' she murmured. It did not bother her that Fran would inspire such an act from Balthier, she knew after all, that he not only would, but had in the past, reacted in similar rash fashion when her safety was in question.

Balthier's tacit evasion of her statement confirmed it, he cleared his throat awkwardly and began distractedly stroking his fingers over her bared knee and under her skirt to stroke her lower thigh, though his expression was introverted and opaque.

'I have done a number of things in my life that many people might consider reprehensible.' Balthier admitted in a low, sonorous murmur eyes staring blindly down into his lap (which Ashe was currently stretched across).

'I've made my own peace with my sins, and if I am honest, really don't harbour much regret. But Aeneas is the exemption. He was my friend. I do not want to think that through some act of cruel fate he is back and I will be forced to kill him again.'

Ashe studied Balthier carefully, six years of marriage and she had managed to prise most of his secrets from him. She knew how it was he came to be a sky pirate, she knew what he had done and suffered to tear himself free of his old life as Ffamran Mid Bunansa, reluctant Judge of Archadia, but until recently she had never so much as heard of Aeneas and for Balthier to use the word 'Friend', well, it was almost unheard of.

'Tell me,' she said simply. Balthier nodded miserably.

'Aeneas was Archadian, though he was a child of ardents; he escaped that life of constant social climbing and found himself in service to Remus, my old mentor, in very similar circumstances to myself.'

'Common ground,' Ashe murmured in gentle encouragement when Balthier fell silent once more. Speaking of the past and matters of a personal nature was difficult for Balthier, Ashe had learned that nothing would ever change that. Balthier always looked ahead and loathed to look back for any reason.

Balthier smiled thinly, 'Usually such similarities and common ground would only lead to rivalry and I,' Balthier pursed his lips, 'I have been told I'm not the easiest person to befriend.' He finally conceded carefully averting his gaze. In Ashe's opinion that was something of an understatement.

'But you made friends with this Aeneas, all the same?' Ashe prompted, quietly fascinated.

She knew that Balthier did not accord the title of friend to any one save Fran, despite the bonds of kinship and fidelity he had built with people such as Vaan, whom he had entrusted (more than once) with his most precious possession, the Strahl, but had never yet referred to with such familiarity as to call him 'friend'.

She wondered what sort of a man this Aeneas had been and what deeply buried tragedy had once transpired that Balthier had taken a gun to the head of someone he had been friends with.

Balthier closed his eyes and dropped his head against the back of the chair with a deep exhalation of something too fatigued to be grief but was nevertheless tinged with an almost palpable regret.

'Aeneas was marvellous company; genial to a fault and personable as only the child of ardents could be.' Balthier snorted sourly letting his head drop back down and opening his eyes for a moment, 'I suppose, now I think on it, Vaan has a little of Aeneas' unpretentious charm. I would argue that Aeneas came into his wits somewhat faster than Vaan however.' Balthier added dryly and Ashe smiled faintly in response.

'Aeneas' only true fault, and one that Vaan does not possess, was his avarice.' Balthier continued. Now that he had begun his words came more swiftly with shorter pauses in-between. Ashe watched Balthier fall into his memories in silence, unwilling to break the flow of recollection.

'Aeneas had a pirate's appetites but lacked the control and restraint that a successful pirate must employ if he wishes to live very long. Aeneas loved wine and women and wagering with a passion. It got him into trouble enough that had Remus found out he almost certainly would have put Aeneas to death.'

Ashe studied Balthier intently as he continued to stare sightlessly down into his lap, watching without seeing as his own fingers traced elaborate spiral patterns over the flesh of Ashe's thigh.

'But he did not find out because you protected him from Remus' sights and hid the evidence of his actions,' Ashe suggested, already knowing the answer. Balthier nodded with a faint smile.

'If I am going to be painfully honest, and I may as well be, I will admit that I never truly earned my reputation as a ladies man. I'm certain it was Aeneas' success in that regard that simply transferred itself to me due to proximity. Honestly I never had the time nor the patience to pursue debauchery with Aeneas' gusto.'

Ashe could not stop her grin from blossoming upon her face but kept her comments to herself. Though the notion of Balthier picking up tips on wooing women from his exuberant friend amused her greatly; at least until she remembered that somewhere down the line Balthier had killed that friend.

'Aeneas was truly reckless,' Balthier glanced up at her keenly, 'I may at times fail to consider all the consequences of my actions but recklessness is not native to my character. Aeneas lived without a thought to consequence; in many ways he lived merely to fulfil his appetites and desires.'

'What happened Balthier; what could he have done that you could not protect him from?' Ashe asked keenly, knowing that was the crux of the matter.

Balthier was in many ways a selfish man, one who feared allowing himself to depend on, and be depended on by anyone. Thus he kept even those he loved most at arms length (Ashe, having fought tooth and nail for a prominent place in the court of his heart knew this only too well) nevertheless Balthier would go to ridiculous lengths to protect what mattered to him most.

Balthier lips pulled back in something that was most definitely not a smile; his teeth bared in a harsh and bitter grimace. His hand tightened spasmodically over her knee for moment. 'He betrayed me; that is what he did. Though perhaps he merely betrayed himself, no matter, it amounts to the same in the end.'

Ashe felt her eyes widen, 'How did he betray you?' she asked softly.

Balthier was quiet for a long moment, he broke eye contact and refused to look up at and meet Ashe's eyes. Eventually his hands resumed his stroking of her leg almost without conscious thought. 'Pirates, either skyborne or seabound, have one cardinal rule, our neutrality. In times of war we do not become involved.'

Ashe gave him an incredulous look, 'You are guilty of breaking that rule yourself,' she pointed out dryly.

Balthier sighed acknowledging the point with a slight wry smile and flicker of his fingers over the nub of her knee, 'Ah, but I had no intention of fighting an entire empire when I stole into your treasury, Highness, that is the pivotal point. Whether there is intention to sway the tides of war to ones favour.'

Ashe remained thoughtfully quiet for a handful of moments considering the ramifications of this statement. 'I am to surmise then that Aeneas did something with the intention of _swaying the tides of war_?'

'Hmm,' Balthier nodded in abstracted fashion, 'Aeneas either stole, or came into possession of, some manner of weapon or engine of war that he intended to sell to the highest bidder, knowing that at the time Archadia was poised to declare war on Dalmasca and Nabradia.'

Ashe felt her brow stitch together sharply at the mention of the Great War that had cost her so dearly and whose scars, over a decade old, still made their presence known in the darkness of her dreams.

'What manner of weapon?' she demanded sharply, the ghost images of crysts of deifected nethicite and sky fortresses shimmering to life behind her eyes.

Balthier shrugged as much as he could with her on his lap, 'I don't know; that was the trouble. He would not tell me, he would not relinquish whatever it was. He gave me, Rikken and even Elza, who loved him, no choice but to execute him before he could find a buyer for his new-fangled weapon of war.'

Ashe regarded him narrowly, sensing some little lie in the inflection of his words, the blank darkness and grief in his eyes, 'You must have some idea. I know you too well to imagine that you would put a bullet in the brain of your friend without absolute proof that you could do nothing less, and what you have said does not smack of personal betrayal so much as stupidity.'

Balthier pursed his lips, 'Mist, magicite, nethicite, Draklor,' he spat harshly, 'I don't _know_ what he had. I only know that he intended to sell a Draklor device to Rozzaria.'

He fixed Ashe with fire in his eyes; a banked anger that she recognised all too well, just as she knew that only one man, long dead, could invoke such response within him. Ashe held her breath and waited for the inevitable, knowing that she had her own wounds regarding Draklor that were as tender as his own.

'I don't know how Aeneas came by this thing, whatever it was, nor why he would sooner die than surrender it. All I know is that it came from the cauldron of Draklor at the very same time that Dr Cid was devising the very weapon that annihilated Nabudis.'

Ashe found herself growing cold from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet as Balthier's scathing words hit her and struck her to the heart. Her chest constricted and her eyes burned.

'Gods, no,' she whispered, 'not Nabudis, not now.'


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve: Amends and reparations**

_A/N: hello everyone, I would like to thank all reading and reviewing for your interest and the enormous amount of positive feedback. I am always so very grateful to everyone. I would also like to say that as of the 23rd June 2008 my computer problems have been resolved...yeah! _

_P.S: this chapter is a little talky, but with a plot this convoluted I think it is necessary to set some facts down before I start blowing stuff up and randomly killing characters as I see fit, plus I promise Balthier is not going to be morose and over-wrought in this story like he was the last...he's just having a bad day in this chapter, hehe ;)_

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It was with a great deal of satisfaction that he watched the younger, leaner man stagger back from the force of his punch, blood erupting from his nose, and stumble into the heavy wooden dining table only to then roll straight over the top of the table and fall in a undignified heap onto the floor on the other side.

A rain of silver cutlery and most of the table cloth and place settings fell in a clattering shower about the fallen man's sprawled form as the man gave up on dignity to cup his broken nose. Basch found himself smiling with grim triumph and satisfaction; sometimes a resigned and passive attitude simply was not enough. Sometimes it was necessary, nay therapeutic, to let his fists express his displeasure.

He had been waiting nigh on ten years for this moment, after all.

'Basch!'

Basch hesitated as her Highness' voice rang out in a mixture of shock, outrage, and simple resignation. His fists curled tightly the former Knight swallowed back the bitter acidic swirl of his anger as he looked down on the other man.

Dazedly Balthier grabbed at the edge of the table he had just fallen over with one hand and cupped his bleeding nose with the other. Basch had rarely felt such anger directed towards another man who was not, in the traditional sense, his enemy.

A slight movement caught his attention from across the room and Basch looked up to see Fran shifting slightly on her feet, caught between a desire to step between Basch and Balthier and the knowledge that it would likely not help matters.

'You lied,' he growled, not so much to Balthier, to whom lying was habitual, but to Fran whom he had, perhaps naively, expected better from.

Fran gazed back at him impassively and then inclined her head minutely in a mixture of acceptance and apology. Basch let his breath out noisily as Ashe stepped forward and rested a supportive, but restraining, hand on his arm.

It was noticeable that no one felt the need, or desire, to assist Balthier who was forced to use his shirt sleeve to stem the flow of blood from his nose as he remained on his backside on the floor in the midst of a clutter of fallen table cutlery.

'Did it not seem fit to you that I would have assisted without the need of such subterfuge?' Basch demanded tiredly.

Fran shrugged the barest lift of one shoulder and minute shake of her head. Basch did not hold Fran accountable particularly; this all had the taste of Balthier's machinations to it and Fran had simply acted to ensure the safety of all involved.

Balthier had grabbed up a collection of fallen napkins from the clutter that had fallen with him to the floor. Wadding the cotton napkins against his still bleeding nose Balthier turned quiet brown eyes up to Basch.

'May I stand?'

Basch was momentarily taken aback by the total lack of cynicism or arrogance in that one question; after a moment he nodded and Balthier pulled himself to his feet still holding the blood saturated cloth to his still bleeding nose.

Fran moved forward with a palm glowing with diffuse healing light. Balthier shook his head as sharply as he could with a large wad of tissues stuffed against his nose. He flicked a hand to Fran without breaking eye contact with Basch, 'Leave it.'

Fran cocked her head to the side in response to that subdued command from Balthier but acquiesced without a word. Balthier's eyes flickered from Basch to Ashe who stood just beside and a little before Basch.

'Highness, Fran, would you leave myself and Basch alone for a moment?'

Balthier asked softly, surprising Basch once more and, from the way Ashe jolted slightly, surprising her as well. Fran did not seem surprised and instead smiled faintly and walked past Balthier towards the door to the private dining chamber.

As she went she deftly flicked a hand to send a wave of faint healing magick towards Balthier's broken nose. After a moment, wherein Ashe stared hard into Balthier's eyes, she too followed Fran out of the room.

Basch turned to watch the two women walk out of the door and then turned back to Balthier only to blink in dumbfounded amazement at the hand held out towards him. Basch looked up at Balthier's face. The other man had removed the tissues from his nose which was swollen but no longer bleeding, Fran's magick already taking affect to mend the broken bone without leaving disfigurement.

'I owe you an apology and I suppose, my thanks.' Balthier admitted with admirable candour; Basch could feel suspicion sloshing inside him.

'Aye you do,' Basch admitted not relenting in the least and suspecting some manner of trap to Balthier's words. He did not believe that Balthier would so readily acknowledge that he was at fault, 'Though forgive me if I doubt your sincerity in offering such.'

Balthier's eyebrows arched in surprise; a complex series of emotions skated over his face as Basch watched before, eventually, a certain chagrin resignation set in. Balthier heaved a deep sigh then winced as the motion twinged his healing nose.

'I suppose I deserve that,' Balthier conceded, 'Though I would argue that it was not my idea to involve you in this little double cross,' Basch's expression must have given insight into his thoughts on that paltry excuse because Balthier then waved a hand in defeat, 'Alright, I suppose that was a weak justification.'

Balthier then cocked his head to the side and studied Basch with a quizzical expression that very much reminded him of Fran. 'I have never fully understood why it is you dislike me Basch. And do not say that it is because of Ashe, because you have long since forgiven me for seducing her Highness….though in truth she was equally guilty in that regard.'

Basch remained silent for a long moment, watching Balthier grow increasingly irritated and uncomfortable with that silence. The other man began studying his blood splattered sleeves with a grimace of obvious distaste.

Basch spent the time pondering why it was he disliked Balthier. Certainly on first acquaintance he had had occasion to be immensely grateful to Balthier, who had not only assisted in his escape from two years captivity but had accepted the story of his innocence without rancour. After two years of guilt and vilification for a heinous act of betrayal he was not guilty of such acceptance was a balm to the soul.

Even during their journeying to reclaim Dalmasca's autonomy he had viewed Balthier as an intelligent, resourceful, and valuable ally in Ashe's quest. He had not viewed Balhtier's dubious profession or his questionable morals with any distaste during that time.

He could not honestly claim it was what Balthier _was _that caused the friction between them. Instead it was all the things that Balthier could have been but deliberately chose _not_ to be that caused the dislike and distrust Basch felt towards the other man.

Yes, Basch realised, his view of Balthier had begun to change after the war when he had discovered that Balthier had deliberate allowed them to believe him dead for an entire year, merely to avoid having to deal with his allies and his friends. Balthier had run away from victory and the responsibilities it entailed and that had been the turning point for Basch.

He disliked Balthier because, ultimately, the man was something of a coward.

In Basch's opinion a man with Balthier's intellect, self-assurance, and abilities had an obligation to use those gifts after Vayne's Solidor's fall to make Archadia a better place. What a boy of sixteen, forced into a position of power he had not the means, nor inclination to use, had not the ability to do a man in his twenties could. After the war Balthier should have returned to Archades and helped his kinsmen make amends and reparations; he had owed a debt to his mother country that he had never, in Basch's opinion, repaid.

Instead Balthier had abandoned friend and ally alike because it was easier than returning to a past he could not make peace with; that was the reason Basch simply could not respect Balthier.

'You are a selfish man Balthier but it is your cowardice that makes it difficult for me to respect you as I would like to do.' Basch finally conceded.

'Hmm,' Balthier absorbed Basch's words with the same quiet, unpretentious seriousness that had characterised their conversation so far, 'I see. I would argue that I have performed any manner of heroic deeds since our first meeting but I suspect that is not quite what you mean.'

'Aye, any man can risk his life in a blaze of glory,' Basch agreed; he was wondering what Balthier's real motivation was for this private conversation. He suspected that in a roundabout way Balthier was going to request his aid; the man would certainly have the temerity to do so.

Balthier was rooting inside the inner pocket of his waistcoat, now looking considerably worse for wear. A flash of silver heralded the emergence of one of the blasted Quidion coins.

Basch was only marginally surprised when Balthier held out the coin to him, 'Here consider this a peace offering; I assure you this is the only coin I have left.'

Basch accepted the coin reluctantly and looked hard at Balthier, 'And why give this to me; I want no part in this pirate curse.'

Balthier allowed a faint smirk to curl over his lips, suggesting a return to his usual demeanour, 'Unfortunately you already are. You have used a coin in my defence. I should very much assume you are in the rogue pirates crosshairs now.'

Basch bit back an annoyed retort, Balthier seemed to sense it and merely nodded with a faint, vaguely mocking, smile. 'Yes once you entangle yourself with pirates you are usually caught in our coil until death.'

'What do you want Balthier?'

Basch was growing impatient waiting for the other man to come to the point; especially as the longer the conversation went on the more Balthier shifted from his previously contrite and conciliatory stance to his more familiar, and hardly appreciated, mien of arrogant duplicity.

Balthier seemed slightly taken aback by Basch's demeanour he brushed his blood smattered sleeves a little distractedly. 'I would appreciate your company. I have a need to travel to the Pharros at Ridorana.'

Basch did not bother to conceal his surprise, 'The place is a ruin and a treacherous one; what business have you there?'

Balthier pursed his lips, 'I need to visit with my father and do not care to do so alone.'

Basch felt suspicion darken his countenance as another wave of surprise accosted him on the heels of Balthier's statement. 'Your father is dead.' He pointed out quietly but firmly.

'But not forgotten,' Balthier's lips quirked in a sickly smile, 'I fear that this pirate threat has some connection either to Draklor or Nabudis, perhaps both. My father was at the heart of both and the Ridorana holds all my father's secrets now.'

Basch raised both eyebrows, feeling the slight resistance of the scar tissue over his left eye stretch with the motion; all his father's secrets? A dawning suspicion blossomed in Basch's mind.

After the war Larsa had ordered an in-depth investigation into Draklor and Dr Cid's experiments. Many researchers and scientists were questioned and some were detained for abuses of science and magick. Draklor was shut down for over three years and many parts of the facility were stripped and dismantled for good.

Now Draklor operated as a purely civilian research and development facility with a strictly monitored remit that prohibited it from entering into weapons development or anything that was not strictly in line with the ethos of Ivalice wide peace.

Basch, under the guise of Judge Maigister Gabranth, had had a hand in the careful, thorough investigation of Draklor and the private experimentation and actions of Dr Cid Bunansa. It was Basch who discovered that a large number of pivotal documents detailing Dr Cid's Mist and Nethicite experiments, including information on the Nebudis bomb, had mysteriously vanished.

A cold lead weight settled in his stomach as he looked into Balthier's quiet and unusually remote expression, 'It was you,' Basch felt his fists curl tightly once more, 'You stole your father's private papers.'

'Yes,' Balthier said without shame or pride.

Basch shook his head. If it had been anyone else he might have suspected that they had stolen the papers for personal gain or nefarious intent but for Balthier to do such was inconceivable; he more than anyone else, perhaps, knew the perils of Nethicite.

Basch could not fathom why Balthier would act in such a way. Why would he remove, or gods forbid destroy, evidence that could illuminate the true extent of Dr Cid's madness and also, or so many believed, provide Ivalice with a way of countering the shadowy, but ever-present, threat of Nethicite.

'Gods be damned man, what were you thinking?' Basch, in his agitation, reached out to grasp Balthier's shoulders.

'Do you not realise that Larsa has been searching for those papers since the end of the war?' Basch punctuated each question with a sharp shake. Interestingly Balthier remained passive throughout, 'Why would you conceal a means to counter the effects of the Nabudis bomb? Sweet gods, how could you do that to Ashe, who suffers most from Nabudis' sorry state?'

Balthier simply looked at him, 'He was my father and I am still his son. I owed it to him.'

Basch could not comprehend this logic, and suspected that this was because there was no logic to the statement.

'Balthier, this is madness. If you have these papers, if you deliberately withheld knowledge that could revive Nabudis,' Basch shook his head amazed and deeply troubled, 'then you are not only traitor to Archadia but you have betrayed Ashe in a way I am not sure can ever be forgiven.'

Balthier narrowed his eyes, 'I have not betrayed anyone. In fact this one act is one of the few times I can say with confidence that my actions were for the best. You do not know of what you speak Basch.'

Balthier tried to pull away from him, but Basch would not have it and jerked the younger man about to face him squarely, still holding him by the upper arms, 'Enough with the double talk, Balthier. Speak plain or I shall tell Ashe what you have done.'

'That would be a mistake,' Balthier retorted with furious calm, dark eyes narrowed and brows drawn in a scowl.

Basch hesitated at the vehemence and strange certainty of Balthier's response, 'I fail to see how. You have deceived us all, withheld information that could ease the burdens of the woman you love for years, why Balthier; what could possess you to act in such a way?'

Basch was unprepared for Balthier's sudden violence as the younger man surged forward, knocking away Basch's grip from his arms and seizing fistfuls of the Basch's simple homespun shirt.

'Because I bloody well know, damn you; _I know_.'

Balthier's face was twisted in a snarl of something too primal, too wounded, to be rage and far too violent to be grief. For a moment Basch was too taken aback to react.

Abruptly as if realising his own actions, Balthier let go of Basch with a shove and slipped by him headed towards the door.

Basch let him go; he had no real desire to strike out at the other man again and to restrain him at the present would only invite a violent reaction.

Basch considered Balthier's words as the other man paced away from him striding to the door and then hesitating only to veer to the side and stare fixedly out of one of the large chamber windows.

'You have read your father's notes?' Basch suggested carefully into the electrified silence, 'Gods man, are you telling me you understand what Cid did? How he constructed the Nethicite bomb that obliterated Nabudis?'

Balthier, who had been scratching at his bloody cuffs with almost jerky, violent motions, immediately stilled. He turned his head on the stalk of his neck, body remaining facing the window. Basch had never seen Balthier look in such a way. His face frighteningly blank as if he held something within that was almost too large a burden for him and was so great it rendered emotion superficial.

'If you would know then come with me to Ridorana.' Balthier said in a completely inflectionless voice.

'I tell you this however; tell Ashe, or force me to reveal to her what I know, and it _will_ destroy her. My silence is, and has always been, to protect her.'

Without another word Balthier turned jerkily on his heels and walked towards the door of the chamber with none of the grace and assurance that usually characterised his actions. Instead he moved like a man who has just received a tremendous beating, moving as if every step caused him intense pain.

'Balthier?' Basch called out to him, unsure how to take these enigmatic revelations that merely posed more questions than they answered and left Basch wondering once again what manner of man Balthier truly was.

Balthier halted just before the door at Basch's call. Basch watched his shoulders hunch and then sag. He spoke without turning to face Basch.

'It will break her heart; to revive Nabudis, to restore the kingdom to its former glory. She has staked her reputation on that pledge. She promises her dead kin that she will see the kingdom restored in her dreams; I've always known that.'

Balthier, to Basch's consternation, leaned forward so that his forehead brushed the smooth grain of the door. The younger man seeming to lose almost all volition in his limbs as he sagged defeated against the door.

'How could I tell her that her dream can _never_ be realised? How can I tell her that Nabudis _should_ never be revived?'

Basch could almost taste the despair and anger in Balthier's voice and could not believe that such raw feeling was merely feigned to further some convoluted ends.

'I do not understand,' Basch admitted softly.

Balthier drew himself away from the door and turned to face Basch over his shoulder as he pulled the door open.

'Come to Ridorana and see for yourself; then tell me that you too would not rather play the coward than see Ashe's dreams destroyed.'

Without another word, his challenge issued, Balthier slipped from the chamber. Basch, left alone to ponder those harsh words, spoken with such bitter self recrimination, realised he had little recourse but to do as bid.

He would go to the Pharros at Ridorana to learn the secrets of Dr Cid.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen: Prologue to disaster; seduction via dessert**

_A/N: hello all, here is another double update for you. I have decided to crank up the plot a little but first I thought I'd write up a little scene to reassure you all that the fluff and the smut of previous stories is not lost; Balthier and Ashe haven't lost their fire completely…._

…_..anyone with an aversion to tongue-in-cheek raunchiness look away now ;)_

* * *

'My word what a preposterous picture.'

Balthier stood before the huge family portrait in the parlour peering at the image depicted in pigment and oils on the canvas. 'I hope you haven't paid for this monstrosity yet?'

Ashe stood before the small table that had been laid ready for the private meal Ashe was impatiently waiting for as she was hungry. 'Balthier the painting is fine; in fact it is very well done.'

Balthier turned back to her an eyebrows high on his forehead, 'Well done? Highness it is the most ridiculously overdone, grandiose frippery I have ever laid eyes on.'

Ashe sighed and settled herself at her place at the table, picking up a silver gilt fork as her stomach rumbled, 'Balthier you have no appreciation for art.'

'That is not art, Highness. For one I do not remember you wearing a crown during the sitting; in fact you don't even own a crown that ridiculous. It looks as though it weighs more than your entire body weight.'

Balthier walked over to the table and settled in his own chair, stretching his legs out under the table and hooking his feet around hers in absent affection. Ashe replaced the fork and rolled her eyes.

'Balthier the crown and the sceptre negligently left leaning against the chair are symbolic. I am a queen, people expect me to look the part at all times.'

Balthier smirked, 'I honestly don't think people are quite so stupid as to really expect their monarch to walk about with a solid gold stick in one hand and a crippling weight of jewel crusted crown on their heads at all times.'

'You have no concept of symbolism,' Ashe sighed over the rumbling of her stomach. She looked hopefully towards the door to the chamber as Balthier chuckled good-naturedly and stoked her leg with his foot.

To the relief of Ashe's complaining stomach their came a knocking at the chamber door and a bowing page swept in and gestured for the parlour maids to bring in their meal.

Ashe smiled and nodded in benign gratitude as the serving staff silently left she and Balthier alone to their meal. Balthier uncorked the bottle of wine and poured them each a glass.

Ashe began attacking the water fowl in sauce with mixed vegetables on her plate with the gusto of someone who has been too busy to eat for the last ten hours. 'What did you and Basch talk about?'

Ashe asked coyly keeping her gaze on her plate as she felt, rather than saw, Balthier hesitate while slicing the simple unadorned, un-garnished slab of steak on his plate. Balthier was a pernickery eater and loathed all sauces and garnish on his meat. He was also openly disdainful of most forms of vegetable.

'I was apologising for my deception regarding the coin; you know that apologies are not my forte and I do better without an audience.' he replied smoothly and Ashe knew then, if she hadn't before, that he had lied.

'Mm,' she murmured as she concentrated on eating for a time. After a moment she reached out for her wine glass and took a sip. 'Fran tells me Basch will be accompanying the two of you to Balfonheim?'

Balthier glassed up over the rim of his own wine glass, 'Yes, I am worried that I have heard nothing from Rikken or Elza. They may be targets of this new 'Aeneas' as well. I want to go and see what I can discover.'

Ashe chewed her mouthful of food and said nothing. She did not completely believe that the reasonable answer Balthier had given her was the truth, but she had not the inclination to raise her suspicions. They ate in silence for the rest of the meal.

'Is something troubling you, Highness?' Balthier asked her quietly as he poured them both more wine. Ashe rested her elbow on the table and cupped her chin in her palm.

'I would think the answer to that was obvious; not more than seven hours ago you returned to me an amnesiac and since then I have discovered you are up to your neck in pirate intrigue regarding a supposedly dead friend. Not only that but I was, for a moment, worried Basch might actually beat you to death in my own dining room.'

Balthier winced and his hand crept towards his healed nose in memory of Basch's punch, 'Yes, I rather thought he might as well,' Balthier looked over the table towards her, 'Would it help at all if I said that I am sorry for distressing you?'

Ashe leaned back in her chair and smiled faintly, 'I would prefer it if you'd promise to never do anything so stupid again, but I fear it would be beyond you.'

Balthier smirked, slow and wicked, 'Now, now Highness, you know as well as I do that if I became any more respectable than I already am, you would fast lose interest.'

Ashe opened her mouth to argue but Balthier beat her to it. He waved a hand in dismissal and smiled rakishly, 'Admit it Ashe, you would never be satisfied with a sensible, dutiful, honest husband.'

Ashe could not quite stop her lips from twisting into a rueful smile of acknowledgement but was saved from having to verbalise it by another knock on the chamber door. Once more the page ushered in the kitchen maids bearing dessert for Ashe (Balthier rarely ever ate a two course meal and had no interest in sweets).

After the servants had disappeared once more Ashe lifted the silver lid on the large dessert bowl and leaned her face forward to savour the sweet, syrupy rush of hot air that rose from the bowl of cooked brandied plums and sugared Succulent Fruits; her favourite dessert.

Ashe lifted her face to catch Balthier smiling at her with indulgent amusement as he leaned back in his chair swilling his wine in the glass. Ashe plucked a plum from the large silver bowl with her fingers and ferried it swiftly to her mouth.

'Mm-mmm,' she murmured happily as she distended her mouth to suck on the fruit, juices rolling down her fingers to her wrist. The sweetness and succulence of the sweet always had the power to transport her back to her childhood and she girlishly kicked her feet under the table as she sucked on the plum.

Balthier slouched comfortably in his chair sipping his wine and merely watched her appreciatively as she devoured the plum slowly and with her eyes closed in pure enjoyment.

'Good is it?' he enquired after Ashe had licked the juice from her hands and fingers with almost feline flickers of her tongue. Balthier watched her every motion with a sort of mesmerised intensity.

Ashe grinned broadly, 'Very, very good,' she murmured as she plucked a large, sticky pendulum shaped Succulent Fruit from the bowl.

With an impish glimmer of challenge in her eyes Ashe deliberately closed her lips over the narrower length of the fruit and carefully began sucking the sugar and juices from the fruits skin.

Balthier shifted a little uncomfortably in the chair and cleared his throat sharply, 'Would it not be less messy to use a knife and fork or a dessert spoon?'

Ashe smiled around the fruit and merely shook her head before slowly pulling her lips away from the fruit. She made a show of licking the juice and sugar from her lips before answering.

'It's more enjoyable this way,'

Balthier arched an eyebrow though he struggled to lift his gaze from her mouth as she trailed her tongue the length of her thumb to her first finger chasing an errant trail of juice.

'Who is it more enjoyable for?' Balthier asked though he did not sound as if he was really interested in an answer. Ashe grinned hugely as she began idly licking the skin of the Succulent Fruit clean of granulated sugar crystals, 'Both of us I should imagine; but mostly me.'

Balthier chuckled lazily and shook his head, eyes dark, 'Is it not terribly sweet?' he gestured with mild curiosity towards the fruit bowl.

Ashe leaned back in her chair and took a deep bite out of the cooked Succulent Fruit, 'Oh yes, terribly, terribly sweet,' she murmured rolling the words and the lingering flavours from the fruits flesh around her mouth.

Balthier crossed and then uncrossed his legs seemingly caught between wanting to laugh and staring in transfixed wonder. Ashe licked her lips and saw that Balthier had to catch himself at the last moment from licking his own in helpless response.

Balthier shook his head and chuckled again understanding the game Ashe was playing even as he fell for it hook, line and sinker, 'I was always raised to believe that very sweet things were bad for me,'

Ashe raised her eyebrows and took another deliberate, lusty bite from the Succulent Fruit in response before extending the half eaten fruit towards him with one hand,

'Isn't that part of the appeal?' she asked with mock innocence.

Balthier smiled broadly, pupils dilated to large, dark glittering pits in his warm brown eyes, he waved a hand against the proffered fruit. 'Thank you but no thank you, I do not want to deprive you of your pleasure.'

Ashe allowed her own smile to grow in depth and size as she abruptly leaned forward across the table and pushed the bowl towards him, 'Ah, but a pleasure is greater when shared, wouldn't you agree?'

Balthier bit back his amusement, lips quivering even as his eyes dropped inadvertently to the low cut of her neckline as she leaned over the table. He turned his head to the side and shook his head, 'I'm finding myself reminded that all pleasures and indulgences reap their own price in the end.' he murmured.

Ashe smirked, knowing she had him exactly where she wanted him. Rising from her place Ashe snagged a brandy plum from the bowl and skirted the table to stand before Balthier. Immediately she wriggled between him and the table to settle onto his lap.

'Everything has a price, Balthier, is that any reason to go without pleasure, simply because it might go sour in the end?'

She offered him the rich, bruised red fruit, sticky and oozing sweet, intoxicating juices and sugar.

Balthier looked from her face to the fruit dripping juice all down his vest, her hand and he groaned, 'You could tempt a saint,' he muttered ill-spiritedly.

Ashe smiled, 'Just one little bite and I shall be satisfied,' Ashe murmured reaching out to card his short hair with the sticky fingers of her free hand; miraculously Balthier did not complain that she was mussing his hair.

'Why?' Balthier murmured softly caught in her web. Ashe leaned her face forward to brush her sweet coated lips against his in the briefest of feather light caresses.

'Because I cannot remember which is sweeter,' she whispered.

Balthier frowned confusedly, not sure what she meant. Ashe lowered the fruit towards his lips so that a drop of the juice dropped onto his chin. He raised a hand to wipe the drop off his skin before Ashe could dart down to lick it off.

'You are in very strange spirits tonight, Highness. I had thought you would still be angry with me.'

Ashe shook her head, her mood darkening for a moment, as she wondered why Balthier seemed so intent on avoiding her seduction. 'I am tired of being angry.' she admitted softly, the hand holding the plum aloft drooped.

She had hoped on a whim to rekindle something that had seemed lost between them; faded and dwindled to the memory of a fierce passion that was now nothing more than a comfortable, dull love.

Perhaps the embers had burned too low from lack of careful tending; perhaps she would be sleeping alone tonight just as she did every night when Balthier was too busy in Nalbina to remember his wife.

As she was turning in his lap to replace the fruit Balthier caught her wrist suddenly enough that she almost dropped the plum. Ashe turned back to Balthier in time to see him dive forward and take a bite from the fruit she still held in her hand.

Balthier coiled one arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him, rearranging her legs until she straddled his lap while keeping her other arm aloft as she held the plum for him.

She watched him chew and swallow one bite after another until the plum was no more; Ashe darted down to close her own lips on his before he could lick the juice and sugar away.

She kissed him deeply and his mouth tasted of brandy and plum and sweetness enough to make her swoon. She nipped and nibbled on his full bottom lip savouring all the flavours.

Balthier broke the kiss eventually so he could trail his lips down the arch of her neck and nibble at her collarbone before kissing a path back to her ear.

'So, tell me, which is sweeter?' he purred in her ear, arm locked around her waist and holding her firmly against him. She could feel his heart beating through the restraining leather and velvet of his black vest. She could taste his passion lingering on her tongue.

Ashe closed her eyes and sighed with satisfaction leaning into him to get another taste of the most terrible and delicious sweetness she had ever known, 'You, Balthier, you are the sweeter pleasure.'

'Hmmm, and to think you had forgotten that?'

Balthier shook his head in mock despair as his free hand, no longer wrapped around her wrist, eased its way, sticky with juice and brandy, over the flesh of her thigh under her skirts, 'I shall have to make sure you never have cause to forget again now, won't I?'

Ashe said nothing but instead lowered her head to kiss him; her well-documented sweet-tooth eager for more succulent, rich kisses.

After that there wasn't much inclination or cause for conversation.

They did, however, make a tremendous mess of the dining table, the carpet, and a small vase which somehow managed to get in the way of a sudden conflagration of reignited passion.

When the maids came to clear away the dishes they wondered what could have happened; the chef did not, he had always been very good at his craft and knew well what a passion for sweet things her majesty had.

* * *

_A/N: okay that was pointless, over-the-top and just plain silly but I feel obligated to write one chapter of daft fluff in all my Balthier/Ashe stories….it's probably a girl thing._


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen: Ambush part one: unexpected developments of calamitous proportions**

_A/N: hello everyone this is the second part of another double update; please don't miss out on the preceding chapter if you are just 'clicking on'. ;)_

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'…..but Father, why can I not go too?'

The ear-ringing whine, pitched so high it threatened to shatter glass, caused Balthier to wince and set a dull headache to pinch between his temples. He closed his eyes and delved into his shallow pool of available patience.

'Because it is really terribly dull and you will be bored, Hallie; now please let go of my leg or I shall be forced to drag you along as I go.'

Hallie shook her head fiercely. Heios, occupying the steps up to Fran's airship Cyntra, affected a look of quiet stubborn, defiance and folded his arms across his chest making it clear he intended to bar his father's right of passage.

'But Faaaaaaatheeeeeerrrrr!' Hallie wailed using her vocal cords as an offensive weapon.

Balthier looked narrowly over to Fran who leaned against the outer hull of her airship, arms folded and expression cool.

'You could have warned me of imminent ambush,' Balthier muttered ill-spiritedly; Fran quirked one eyebrow.

'I could have,' she agreed calmly enough, her very tone making it clear that she was in favour of his attackers. Balthier looked down at his daughter still clamped limpet like to his left leg and swallowed down a mixture of annoyance and resigned affection.

'How did you come to discover I was leaving anyway?' Balthier inquired as he attempted to lean down to peel Hallie away from. Heios sensing that Hallie's grip was coming loose leapt down from the steps and coiled his arms and upper body around his father's right arm.

'Oh for the love of…' Balthier bit back the curse and abruptly gave up; clearly his plan to be away for the Pharos bright and early had come to naught.

Not only had someone tipped off his children to his departure but Basch was also conspicuous in his absence. Balthier suspected a conspiracy; the question was who was the mastermind?

'Hallie, Heios where are you?' Vaan's cheerfully loud voice rang out across the inner courtyard and the still air of the early morning.

Aha, here comes the rat, Balthier smiled ruefully as Vaan rounded the corner and started towards him along the path between cacti gardens.

With a long suffering sigh Balthier tapped both children on the top of the head causing them both to look up at him and momentarily loosen their grip enough that he was able to bend his knees and sit down on the courtyard ground with both children shifting their grip from his legs to an arm each; holding him in place.

Balthier decided not to worry over much about the absurdity of being held hostage by two four year olds; after all they had both had him under their control since the moment of their birth and he suspected this domination would grow worse as they grew more conniving with the years.

'Good morning Captain, am I to assume you are responsible for my current predicament?'

Vaan grinned in a loose lipped way, 'Huh? What do you mean?' he asked innocently but Balthier knew Vaan well enough to just about see through the otherwise implacable veneer of vacuous stupidity Vaan projected with consummate care.

Balthier rolled his eyes in answer as he shifted on the ground and tried to free his arms so that he could sit a little more comfortably. Hallie and Heios did not trust him, however, and each clamped down on one of his arms even tighter.

'Well then, Captain, what is it you want, hmm?'

Vaan, contrary to popular opinion, was excellent at subterfuge. The evidence to support this notion was that despite gaining a position as head of Ashe's armed forces and also being a veteran of all manner of daring rescues, battles, wars and Ivalice saving actions, people still thought he was a simple minded, harmless, idiot.

Balthier had long since harboured the opinion that had Vaan possessed even a modicum of greed or self-interest he could have been a very dangerous man. As it was Vaan was perhaps one of the nicest, most determinedly loyal, arch manipulators Balthier had ever met.

In response to Balthier's pointed question Vaan immediately pasted an expression of innocent confusion onto his face, scrunching his face into a puckered frown. 'Um, I don't think you should be leaving right now, Balthier. You probably should be concentrating on stuff here.'

Balthier frowned up at him, squinting against the sun, which caused a twinge in his still sore nose. He opened his mouth, intending to ask Vaan precisely what he meant by that but at that moment Heios tugged on his sleeve insistently.

'Yes father, do not go. We do not wish you to.'

Balthier turned his head to look at his usually taciturn son with an interesting mixture of helpless frustration and defeat.

Being father to Hallie was simplicity itself; being father to Heios was slightly more difficult. Oh, it was not a lack of love on his part, it was merely that Heios reminded him so forcibly of the boy he used to be (though perhaps a tad more dour) Balthier found himself hesitating to become too involved in his sons life.

He was very afraid he would somehow be responsible for Heios making the same mistakes that he had made. Still Balthier had no more ability to truly deny Heios his wishes than he did Hallie.

So he resigned himself to nodding his head to Heios in a gesture that was not exactly a declaration of defeat but was damn close Balthier turned his attention back to the man who had set up the ambush in the first place.

'What precisely should I be concentrating on here, Vaan?' he queried.

Vaan, who was watching the way Hallie and Heios weighted down one of Balthier's arms apiece, did not immediately answer. Balthier glanced over to the silent Fran who merely shrugged; they were both well aware that Vaan had the attention span of a constipated Chocobo.

Balthier sighed irritably, 'Vaan, pay attention, I was asking you a question.'

Vaan blinked dazedly, 'Huh?'

Balthier managed to free his arms as the children dropped their guard and instead curled an arm around the back of each child in a loose embrace that had more to do with holding them in place than anything else. He gave Vaan a look that managed to be both curious and annoyed; it was an expression few others could master.

'Oh, right, sorry.' Vaan rubbed at the back of his neck and scuffed his feet, a habitual tick that he had never bothered to break himself of.

'Umm, well, see, I'm Ashe's Knight, right?' He glanced up at Balthier from under the fringe of his pale hair with large, guileless eyes.

Balthier studied him for a long moment while wondering what that inane expression and earnest eyes were hiding, 'Yes, Vaan, I am aware of this.' He said levelly.

Vaan grinned, quick and sudden, 'Good. I was worried maybe you hadn't got all your memory back; or maybe things got a little jumbled up.'

Balthier shot him a venomous look as Fran abruptly cleared her throat in an unconvincing attempt to stifle a laugh. Before Balthier could fire off a retort he was forced to suck in a sharp breath of pain as Hallie attempted to climb into his lap and accidently kicked him in the crotch.

Balthier swiftly picked Hallie up and put her down on the ground at arms length from himself and the more delicate parts of his anatomy; it was simply staggering how detrimental to his health fatherhood could be.

The noise of Vaan scuffing his feet on the flagstones once more drew Balthier's attention back to him in time to see the other man try not to laugh at Balthier's near castration.

'I think you had best get to your point before I lose my patience captain,'

Vaan seemed to recognise the inherent threat in that statement and nodded vigorously, although Balthier suspected strongly that Vaan was laughing at him behind his sky-blue eyes.

'Right, so because I'm Ashe's captain and because that outranks being your almost apprentice for a while, I have to do what she wants.' Vaan rubbed more fiercely at the back of his neck, 'Even if what she says she wants and what she wants aren't the same thing.' He added awkwardly.

Balthier could only stare at him. To understand Vaan one needed a translation manual and years of study and even then Vaan's rambling speech was a symphony of incoherence.

'Vaan, I have not the faintest clue what you are talking about. Can this wait until after I return?' Balthier had long since lost patience and only dazzled incomprehension was keeping him from making a break for the Cyntra and taking wing.

Vaan shook his head, 'No, because if you leave you won't be here.'

Balthier shook his own head in slow bewilderment, 'Yes Vaan, that is the usual way of things when one departs one location in favour of another.' after another moments blank reflection Balthier looked to the twins, 'Children, promise me you will not talk over much with Captain Vaan. I think your development might suffer.'

Both children gazed up at him blankly; Vaan also gazed at him with that deceptively stupid, vaguely insipid concentration. Balthier strongly suspected that Vaan was being deliberately obtuse and incomprehensible for the sheer joy of irritating him.

'It's not easy,' Vaan argued in his own defence, 'I mean I can't say anything because I have to do my duty, but I think you should know what it is I can't tell you, anyway.'

Balthier finally began to understand his meaning (which said something less than favourable about his own thought processes) and he looked at Vaan more sharply, 'Ashe has forbidden you from telling me something?'

Vaan shook his head, 'No, but she probably would have if she'd thought of it. I think you coming home without a brain sort of affected her.' Vaan kept his voice casual and his eyes averted obviously coyly enjoying taking pot-shots at Balthier about his brief spell of amnesia.

Balthier scowled even though he knew he was being played the barb hit home, '_Memory, _Vaan, I mislaid my memory. My cognitive functions were perfectly fine.' He said with acid precision.

Vaan grinned in his patented lazy, vacuous way, 'Is there really a difference?'

Balthier immediately opened his mouth on a retort then snapped his jaws shut and pressed the fingers of one hand to his forehead as a tension headache pinged into life.

He knew better than to try and mount a defence against that verbal barb. He would likely lose and he had no intention of losing a moral battle with Vaan. His pride (and his nose) had just barely recovered from his tete-a-tete with Basch, after all.

'Alright, Vaan. Clearly you feel there is something going on, in regards to Ashe, that I am in ignorance of, something you are not at liberty to say, but feel obligated to draw my attention to, correct?'

Vaan continued to grin as blank, secretive and impenetrable as the mysteries of all Ivalice, 'Uh-huh, that about covers it.'

Balthier began the awkward process of rising to his feet and his children immediately clamped themselves to his body, one taking an arm the other favouring a vice grip on his leg.

Balthier gritted his teeth and stood anyway, 'Vaan, you clearly want me to tell me something but without more information I'm inclined to simply leave for the Ridorana as planned.'

'Father noooooooo!' Hallie wailed as she dangled on tip-toe and wrapped herself like a serpent around his arm.

'No, we will not let you,' Heios said softly, sitting on Balthier's foot with his arms clamped around his leg and face pressed into his knee.

Balthier considered for a split second shaking them forcibly off him before he simply resigned himself to the discomfort of having two four year olds dangling off his limbs.

Vaan was watching him keenly and Balthier suspected that Vaan had a much better insight into what business Balthier had at the Ridorana than the other man had any right too, 'Yeah, and you probably should go there,' Vaan said agreeable, 'but first you need to ask Ashe who she's been meeting with about Nabudis.'

Balthier stopped trying to peel his children off him and stared at Vaan in mute shock for a moment before swearing loudly and abruptly. Immediately Balthier remembered that his children were present and looked at both in turn, 'Pretend you didn't hear that, children.'

Balthier faced Vaan then with a hard face, and tense jaw, 'Damn it all,' he growled something in his heart freezing over at both the staggering coincidence of it all and the simple horror of who Ashe might be talking to about Nabudis and why. Balthier resisted turning to Fran for guidance by sheer force of will, though he could feel her tense wariness like a weight against his back.

He gritted his teeth and addressed Vaan, 'I suppose if I ask for more information you will tell me that you are honour-bound to keep your silence, hm?'

Vaan nodded, 'Not only that but I don't even know what you're talking about. As far as I'm concerned we were talking about airships this whole time.'

Balthier shook his head sharply as he hoisted Hallie into his arms and Heios reluctantly let go of his leg in order to reach up and hook his fingers around his father's belt.

Balthier took a moment to unruffled his mental feathers before addressing Vaan once more, 'You seem to have picked up some rather devious habits of subterfuge Vaan; personally I blame Fran.'

Vaan smiled inanely in response and he heard Fran shift minutely but refrain from saying anything. Balthier sighed and accepted that no more information would be forth coming.

He nodded his head to Vaan, a quick jerk of the chin, in acknowledgement and maybe even gratitude, though he would reserve judgement on that until he knew precisely what Ashe was up to.

'Come along children, let's go and beard your mother in her den, shall we?' Balthier chirped with insincere cheerfulness as he shifted his grip on Hallie so he could reach down and take Heios' hand.

'Are we not flying Father?' Heios queried.

'It does not appear so, at least not today,' Balthier responded with a dry sideways glance Vaan's way.

Heios nodded, 'Good. I did not want to go anyway and I do not think Mister Basch wanted to either.'

'_I _wanted to go flying.' Hallie piped up loudly.

'You always want to go flying. That's all you talk about. Dr Finkirk says you will not learn fractions if your head is in the clouds.' Heios dourly pointed out as Vaan trailed after Balthier and his children. Balthier wisely did not intervene in the twins' argument.

As a child he had always been an avid and quick learner; although he had never been what one might call a well behaved student. He seemed to remember having a tendency to run off to climb trees and jump off tall ledges at times when he should have been learning basic grammar. Therefore he really had no right to chastise Hallie.

'I do not want to learn fractions; pirates laugh in the face of fractions.'

'You are not a pirate.' Heios was unimpressed.

And never will be if I have my way, Balthier added silently, wondering if Ashe was right and he had corrupted the children with his stories about pirating.

Vaan caught up with Balthier who was walking slowly to accommodate Heios' much, much shorter strides. Vaan grinned, 'I never learned fractions,' he agreed with Hallie who beamed at him while Heios looked just slightly scandalised.

'See,' Hallie cried jubilantly. Balthier merely sighed and shook his head.

'Father did you learn fractions?' Heios began to ask when something completely unexpected happened.

A small cylindrical pipe flew over the low wall of the inner courtyard and hit the paved pathway between the cacti gardens with a hissing metallic clatter. Immediately as it rolled towards the four of them hazy, iridescent smoke……or maybe _mist _would be more apt….began to pour from the top of what was obviously some form of incendiary device.

Balthier and Vaan spared a split second to stare at each other in total surprise before instantly snapping into action. Vaan reached down and picked up Heios in his arms as Balthier turned on his heels, Hallie clutched to him, and began to run towards the shelter of Fran's waiting airship, Vaan and Heios on his heels.

Fran had already started the Cyntra and was standing in the opening hatch of the airship and reached for the children as the Mist grenade exploded, spilling out Mist into the open air.

Fran shivered as the first tendrils of Mist reached her acute senses. Her ears quivered and nose twitched as she almost unconsciously pressed a hand to her healing stomach wound.

'This Mist is foul; it is poison to me,'

Balthier nodded sharply as he roughly pushed a crying Hallie into Fran's waiting arms and took Heios from Vaan ready to push him into the ship as well. 'Take the ship and get yourself and the children clear.'

Fran nodded, as distantly from other areas of the palace ground they heard the sounds of skirmish and clouds of Mist vapour began rolling from the upper windows of one of the conical towers of the palace.

Vaan paled visibly, 'Ashe…..that's Ashe's private study,'

Vaan spun on his heel and started running towards the palace as bells began to ring heralding an attack in progress.

'Father, father, father…' The children were chanting in obvious panic as Fran pulled them away from Balthier towards the cabin of the Cyntra. Balthier followed the three into the cabin and helped to secure them into the seats as Fran began launch procedures ready to depart before the Mist corrupted the ships engines.

'Be good children; do as Fran says and your mother and I will collect you shortly,' roughly Balthier leaned forward to kiss each of this children on the head in farewell.

Heios was pale but dry eyed and nodded, 'I will be good father; I promise.'

Hallie in contrast clutched at Balthier's burnished gold vest, huge tears rolling down her face, 'Don't leave us!'

Balthier grimly plucked Hallie's fingers from his clothes, he cupped her face in his hand and looked firmly into her tear glittering eyes, 'Be good, be brave, this will all be over in no time.'

He brushed another kiss to both Hallie and Heios heads Balthier rose on suddenly shaking legs and rushed towards the entrance hatch of the Cyntra with the roar of the ships engines and his children's cries in his ears.

He threw open the hatch as the Cyntra hovered above the Mist choked courtyard ready to fly away in a burst of glossair. Balthier leapt from the hatch to the courtyard at least ten feet below, landed and rolled smoothly to his feet.

Above his head Fran guided the Cyntra away at speed; Balthier did not have the luxury of time to watch his children fly to safety. He was already running towards the palace where the sounds of shouts and battle cries rent the once peaceful atmosphere.

Balthier ran at speed through the passages of the palace without encountering any aggressors but upon breaching the ante chamber used to keep petitioners at bay until Ashe was ready to hear them Balthier hit trouble.

He skidded to a dumbfounded halt at the sight before him; his mind went blank and even the adrenaline surge roaring in his head dulled in shock.

Baknamy?

In the centre of the chamber a short but lithely muscled brunette woman in an interesting approximation of the standard Dalmascan soldiers garb was busy punching, kicking and throwing a hoard of some dozen Baknamy in various shades of green and grey and differing collections of mismatched armour, around the room.

Balthier waded into the knot of Baknamy attacking the young woman and grabbed a particularly large, muscular, hunched shouldered and warty-fleshed Baknamy by the back of his chain-mailed collar and flung him into a wall.

The other Baknamy turned to face this new threat as did the solider, who smiled savagely at him through a bleeding nose, pulled out a six inch long blade and stabbed one of the startled Baknamy as it turned to face Balthier.

'Hi Balthier,' the young woman greeted him jovially enough as the stood back to back and the Baknamy attempted to surround them.

'Sergeant Filo,' Balthier murmured his own greeting, 'Can you tell me what is happening?'

'Dunno, all these Mist grenades came out of nowhere and then suddenly the Baknamy came out of the Mist. Vaan's gone to check on Ashe, but we mostly have the lower levels of the Palace secure.'

As she spoke Filo struck out with a high kick that sent one Baknamy flying through the air, nose ruptured and straight into three of his compeers. Balthier managed to grab hold of one of the wiry little intruders by their bony ankle and swing into the wall dropping the limp little body soon after.

The two of them, with their superior height, strength and greater familiarity with their surroundings were able to subdue the gaggle of Baknamy relatively easily. In a matter of ten minutes Balthier and Filo were standing over the sundry conscious bodies of the Baknamy.

'Huh, why would the Baknamy attack us?' Filo wondered as she poked one of the limp bodies with her steel toed boot.

Balthier shook his head, 'Where is Ashe?'

Filo shrugged, 'She was in her chambers last I knew, before the attack started. I don't know where she is now.'

Balthier nodded, 'Filo, secure these prisoners for questioning; I'm going to find my wife.'

'Okey-dokey,' Filo chirped cheerfully her voice falling away as Balthier strode through the thick, choking, wet cotton wool tasting Mist clogging the hallways of the palace headed towards the upper reaches of the palace.

He passed by any number of Baknamy corpses and one or two Dalmascan bodies, those who had been ambushed by the Baknamy hidden in the Mist during the initial ambush.

Balthier did not stop to check on the wounded as skirted over the wreckage of the fight and took the curving stone staircase up to Ashe's private study two or three steps at a time.

He reached the doors to Ashe's study and hesitated to see the thick metal studded wooden doors blasted to kindling. Ashe's library was in disarray he saw a dead Baknamy lying beside an overturned desk, a letter opener embedded into his stomach. Another three Baknamy had been crushed under the weight of an overturned book case.

'Ashe?' Balthier called out, recognising his wife's handiwork in the design of the Baknamy's demise. He received a reply as the door to the inner chamber of Ashe's most private work sanctum slammed open and a wide eyed, pale faced Vaan stood framed in the threshold.

'They got her…..Balthier, Ashe is gone!'

Without a word Balthier pushed past Vaan and entered the private study with its small high window and bare stone walls lined with leather bound tomes and filled with just a simple desk and chair for writing.

It was the far wall of the circular room that held Balthier's attention hostage.

Written in a thick, viscous substance, which could only be blood, was a frankly chilling message, bearing the simple legend:

**QuEen KiLL BaKnAmY**

**BaKnAmY KiLL QuEen**

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_A/N: to be continued….._


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen: The worth of a man is measured in how he handles a crisis**

_A/N: Hello everyone, thank you all for the reviews, fifty-seven for fourteen chapters is a record for me and I am eternally grateful to you all. This is a longish chapter and, yes, another cliff-hanger….I'm sorry!_

_I also have an announcement: after a looonnnng time procrastinating I have opened an account on Fiction.press as Spikeylamb44 and will be uploading a purely original story….which is very, very scary. So possibly I will be updating a little slower while I ease my way into purely original writing….or perhaps not, who knows? ;) _

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'……Zzzzzt……dren to Halim?'

Balthier hunched over the communication console of the Strahl and twiddled dials and gauges to try and clear up the transmission feed.

'…sppppzzzzaaakk…Bal…..thier….ssssssshhh…hear me?'

'Fran the transmission is breaking up I can barely read you. If you can hear me I need you to take care of the children for a time. We have a situation here and I don't want to risk bringing the children back to either Rabanastre or Nalbina until it is resolved.'

Hissing static answered him as Balthier rested his elbows on the control console of the Strahl and waited for Fran's response, 'Fran?'

'……I hear you Balthier. Shall I transport the children to Halim or would you prefer I take them to Hamish?'

The transmission feed was markedly improved and he wondered if Fran had dropped her altitude to improve the transmission. Sighing with fatigue and pent up anxiety that left knots in the muscles of his shoulders and caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up on end, Balthier tried to join the dots of his thoughts into a coherent pattern.

'Fran are the children awake?' he asked quietly, his thoughts meandered along still paths that came to an abrupt halt when he strayed into areas he dared not ponder. Most of those paths he dared not tread involved Ashe in someway.

Seven hours. Seven bloody hours and still no word; no furious and bedraggled Ashe had come barging into her own palace like a one woman army dragging the heads of her would be captors in clenched fists in all that time and Balthier's hope that she would began to dwindle.

It was ridiculous really considering Ashe's position and the life they led, but he had never contemplated the notion that she could ever be taken; not his Queen whose stubborn refusal to accept the status quo had led her to quite literally change the face of Ivalice.

He did not know what was worse, the idea that someone had taken her, or the thought that at any moment her shroud draped body would be brought into the palace.

How would he ever face his children again should Ashe die?

'…….Father?'

Balthier did not realise he had closed his eyes until they snapped open at the tremulous sound of his son's voice crackling with static interference. For a moment Balthier could not make himself speak, all he could do was absorb the sound of his little boy's voice in silence.

Then he sighed and tried to prove himself to be, despite of his own fears, a father worthy of the name, 'Heios are you well, where is your sister?'

For a moment only static crackle filled the buzzing transmission feed, Balthier tapped his fingers against the Strahl's console and resisted the urge to fiddle uselessly with dials and buttons in his mounting frustration (gods damn it but he _needed_ to hear his children's voices now; he would not allow poor technology to deprive him).

'….sppppaakkk……had to spell her to sleep because she was upset. Do you want me to wake her Father?'

'No, no, let her sleep.' Balthier winced guessing the parts he had not properly heard and he raised a hand to press fingers to his brow as a tension headache sprang to life. The image of Fran trying to pilot the Cyntra to safety and casting a sleep spell on his hysterical daughter bit into his soul; the fact that he could do nothing about it hurt all the more virulently, however.

'Heios, I want you to listen to me very carefully, understood?'

'I always listen carefully, Father.'

Balthier smiled faintly, 'I know, and I am very proud of you. It is a skill I never mastered and have come to regret it, especially now.'

'…..are you really proud of me Father?'

Balthier blinked, broken out of his desperate search for the right way to tell a four year old that his mother was missing and her kidnappers had daubed a message onto the wall of her study in her own blood.

'Of course,' Balthier was startled into honesty before he regained control of himself before he failed his son completely. With a blithe confidence completely feigned he spoke cheerfully into the communication relay, 'now listen Heios, something has happened and your mother has placed herself in a spot of bother and I have to go and fetch her back to the palace. In the meantime I want you and your sister to assist Fran on some errands she has to run.'

There was a pause so long that Balthier had reached for the communication relay to check for broken transmission, then Heios' soft voice floated over the relay, 'Father, is Mother in danger?'

Time stood on its head as Balthier struggled with himself and how to answer that question. Did he lie and then accept the consequences should it prove to be the case that Ashe was anything but well, or should he burden a four year old child with the brutal truth?

'Heios, do you trust me?' Balthier asked abruptly, surprising himself.

'….of course Father,' Heios sounded even more startled by this question.

'Then I promise you that your mother will be well. We've made a bit of a mess of things, your mother and I, and in truth we're all in a muddle; that is why you and Hallie must be patient and stay with Fran while we fix the mess we have made.'

'Can we not help you Father?'

Balthier closed his eyes and breathed through his nose; He had no idea why this hurt so much. He had faced calamity before with equanimity but this was different. For the first time Balthier realised that it was not just his life, or even his and Ashe's lives that were in jeopardy but their children's as well.

Anger fused into a solid compound of rage and conviction inside his chest; he would not allow these bastards, whoever they were, pirate or Baknamy, god, monster or entire nation to hurt his children. It would not be borne. He would fix this.

'Heios, you are helping, you and Hallie, and you must promise that you will continue to help both myself and your mother by being the good, clever, brave children I know you are.'

'I promise Father and I shall make Hallie promise too, when she wakes up.'

Balthier nodded, pressing the fingers of both hands to his throbbing temples. 'Good. I am very grateful. Fran?'

'I am here.'

Balthier nodded again, not caring that she could not see the gesture, 'Heios has agreed to help you with your errands, did you hear?' he asked with force cheer, guessing that his bright, inquisitive boy would be listening avidly to this exchange and knowing, as only a life long performer could know, how vitally important it was to maintain the integrity of his act now.

'I am pleased, indeed.' Fran demurred.

'Hmm, I would humbly suggest that you set down to run your errands in Landis first; I am sure Hamish will have need of the three of you. The man is always looking for cheap labour and free assistance.'

There was a slight pause, 'I see,' Fran's careful tone carried well over the momentarily clear transmission, 'I had thought to travel to Bhujeerba?'

Balthier sighed, 'No, not yet, I need more time.' _More time before I have to tell Halim that the niece he looks on like a daughter is gone. I have never been a brave man and I am not strong enough to countenance such a thing. _

Fran heard the words he did not say and said no more of Bhujeerba, 'I will contact you in two days time.'

Balthier nodded again, redundantly, rubbing the balls of his thumbs into his closed eyelids, 'I trust your judgement and discretion over my own, Fran; you know this.' _I don't know what to do and I am afraid, sweet gods I am afraid, that this is one disaster I cannot dance away from. Take care of the children. _

He heard Fran's slight consternation in her carefully loaded response, 'We will speak soon; I will ensure my errands do not keep me from your side too long.' _Have courage Balthier; I have faith in you._

'Thank you Fran, where would I be without you?' he replied with the same brittle cheer, 'Would you be kind enough to kiss the children good night for myself and Ashe, and do not ask me to return the favour with Basch, I owe you a great debt of devotion but even I have my limits.'

'Do not worry,' Fran replied and he heard the faint, indulgent amusement in her tone, 'I know the limits of your devotion to me and where it does not permit you to act.' she replied dryly and Balthier actually found himself able to summon a faint smile as he switched off the relay.

Rising to his feet Balthier left the Strahl and moved swiftly, without stopping to meet the eyes of the anxious, doubtful, fearful and suspicious palace staff who loitered in the aftermath of the Baknamy invasion eager for news.

The whispers behind cupped palms chased on his heels as he sort out familiar faces.

_Where is her Majesty, why has she not addressed the people?_

_What has happened? Are we at war again?_

_Did you hear, it was Baknamy that attacked?_

_Where is her Majesty; where is the Lady Ashe?_

Balthier shoved open the doors of the less than salubriously named 'war room'. The large room in the palace cellars where once Ashe's father had plotted out his own inevitable defeat on a carven board replica of the Nalbina battlefield as the Empire swarmed the city's defences and with it, Dalmasca's sovereignty.

Now that same table was surrounded by the most trusted and influential people in Dalmasca – and to Balthier's momentary surprise, the Archadian Empress.

'Balthier!'

Penelo left the table and moved towards him greeting him with a hug that was neither solicited nor appreciated but which Balthier felt obligated to return if only briefly. 'Basch contacted me secretly and I came as soon as I could.'

Penelo stepped back from him giving him a look of doe-eyed concern brimming with a compassion he did not think he could stomach for an extended period of time, so he instead sort out Basch's eyes; he quirked an eyebrow in silent question.

Basch pulled from his jacket breast pocket the Quidion coin Balthier had entrusted to his care as a gesture of conciliation, 'This coin can alter the appearance of a person to resemble another; Penelo and Ashe are of similar age and build to better suit the magick.'

Balthier felt his eyebrows peak on his brow, 'I commend your thinking, in fact, I should have thought of that.' he added a little chagrin.

'You had a lot on your mind, Balthier, we all do,' Vaan said in a shockingly subdued voice, drawing Balthier's attention to him, 'How are the twins?'

Balthier sighed, 'I have asked Fran to take the children to Hamish in Landis; one can only hope that they are not targets in this mess but if they are our enemy will expect the children to go to Ondore. They will be safe for now.'

'Our enemy; and who is that?' Montblanc, Moogle entrepreneur, manager of the largest Mark Hunters Guild in Ivalice and privy councillor in Ashe's cabinet spoke up from his perch on top of the board table. 'I take it you agree with Vaan and do not believe the Baknamy are the real aggressor?'

Balthier shared a look with Vaan, memories of a previous conversation filtering between them, 'You are right Montblanc,' he nodded respectfully to Nono's brother, and a Moogle he had come know socially as a friendly rival and business partner since settling in Nalbina, 'I think things are considerably more complex than that.'

Penelo had been watching the men in the room and now she stepped forward and touched Balthier's sleeve, 'Balthier tell me how to use the Quidion. If Ashe were really here she would have reassured the people and gone to talk to them hours ago. The longer we wait the more upset and scared people are going to get.'

Balthier sighed and nodded, holding out his hand for the Quidion that Basch placed in his palm.

'I can't say I fully understand the magick involved. Fran once told me it was sympathetic neuromancy, but I confess I was not listening to her explanation and I lack the basic understanding of magick to begin with.'

Flicking the Quidion between his fingers Balthier stepped forward toward Penelo and pressed the Coin to her forehead.

'You have to picture the person you wish to impersonate in your mind and hold that impression while keeping the coin on your person at all times. The better you know the individual the more affective the pretence.'

'Alright,' Penelo closed her eyes and clenched her fists at her sides, leaning forward slightly on the balls of her feet, so that she was essentially pressing the coin into her own flesh and Balthier was merely holding it in place.

Against his fingers the coin grew uncomfortably hot before suddenly flashing cold. Penelo's familiar image rippled and shifted as the magick took hold. The young woman before him lost at least an inch in height and gained more pronounced curves, her hair shrank from a cascade of wheat blonde waves to a thin ashy cap of hair that was cut off just under her chin.

Penelo opened her eyes as Balthier stepped back and her voice was not her own, instead it was a painfully familiar voice with an unfamiliar inflection, 'did it work?' Ashe who was not Ashe queried; Penelo's anxiety puckering Ashe's smooth brow.

Consternation flashed around the room as each of the other men reacted to the seemingly perfect illusion that had enveloped and erased all trace of Penelo and replaced her visage with a perfect facsimile of their missing Queen.

Balthier pushed the Quidion into the imposter's warm palm and noted with sick irony that this false Queen even wore his green and gold ring upon her thumb exactly as Ashe had done, faithfully, throughout their marriage.

'It would appear so; you have an admirable eye for detail. No one will know you are not the real Dynast Queen.'

The imposter wearing Ashe's face smiled hesitantly in a way that Ashe never would, 'I will do my best not to let Ashe down. At least while I'm doing this you all can work on finding Ashe quickly.'

Balthier knew that Penelo sort only to help, that a girl who had risen from war orphan to Empress did not need to usurp a missing Queen's position, but nevertheless he could not help how discomforted he was by the pretence.

Montblanc leapt down from the table and waddled over to Penelo in disguise he looked up at her pensively, 'It's all well and good to look like our Queen, but can you act the part? I mean no offence you understand, but this sort of thing creates a dangerous president.'

Penelo-not-Penelo squared her shoulders and straightened her spine, tilting her chin up in a way he had seen Ashe do hundreds of times before; the incredible likeness startled Balthier to the core.

Penelo laughed and it did not sound like Penelo, soft, personable, gentle Penelo at all, 'I've been playing an Empress in front of a whole nation of people who were bound and determined to hate me just because I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth; don't worry I can do this.'

Without another word Penelo –not -Penelo turned on her heel and stalked out of the war room with the presence of a Queen and the inherent annoyance in her step that was quintessentially Ashe. Montblanc nodded to Balthier briefly before hurrying after his imposter monarch.

As the door swung closed after the two Balthier turned back to see Vaan suppressing a wry grin, he met Balthier's eyes, 'Don't worry, Penelo can do it and she'll do it for as long as we need her to do. She'll do it without messing things up for Ashe too. No one will need to know that Ashe went missing at all.'

Balthier nodded, no one left in the room had mentioned the possibility that Ashe might not return to take back the mantle of her rule from Penelo's competent substitution; it was not denial or naivety it was simple bedrock conviction.

The Dynast Queen still lived and somewhere an incandescently angry Ashe was busy ripping shreds from her would-be kidnappers. Balthier believed this; he lived and breathed this truth. He made it true with every beat of his heart.

'Vaan tell me what you and Kytes were talking about so intently before I left to contact Fran.'

Vaan blinked and Basch looked sharply between the two, 'I didn't think you noticed that,' Vaan admitted bashfully.

Balthier smirked colourlessly, 'I notice most things, I simply lack the foresight to bear them proper mind. What did Kytes tell you?'

It was an interesting fact that when Vaan established himself in the palace he brought along with him a hefty proportion of the former population of Lowtown; Filo had followed Vaan into the Dalmascan Guard for reasons that were obvious to everyone but the two-haired Captain, but then that was ever the way with unrequited love, wasn't it? Kytes on the other hand seem to have followed Vaan simply because he was used to doing so.

Still the funny little mage had eeked out his own place in the Palace hierarchy acting as Ashe's personal bibliographer and record-keeper as well as possessing an admirable skill for magick. Balthier had never exchanged much in the way of conversation with the man-child, who at somewhere just shy of seventeen was still more boy than man.

Vaan was scuffing his feet as he weighed up the options of betraying a Queen's confidences while pondering whether or not vows of secrecy could be waived when said Queen's life may be forfeit else-wise.

'Ashe has been meeting with some men,' Vaan began rubbing at the back of his neck in habitual nervous gesture. Balthier and Basch exchanged curious glances.

'In what capacity has she been meeting with these men?' Balthier asked keenly. The chance that his Queen had been conducting illicit affairs was admittedly slight but Balthier was still a man and a man worried about these things.

Vaan looked up at him mournfully, 'About Nabudis. This man called Mayhew came to see her about a year ago and he said he and this professor…..professor…I can't remember, any this old guy with a beard and this Mayhew man said they could fix Nabradia. Make it so that the Mist went away.'

Balthier felt himself blanch and he stepped back, in what he hoped was a casual way, to press one hand to the stone wall behind his back. Suddenly he needed the solidity of the cool stone behind him as a roaring horror charged his mind.

'Balthier?'

Basch had noticed his reaction, but then the man possessed knowledge that Balthier had told no one else (he had not even told Fran that he had possession of his father's notes; though he suspected that she had guessed).

He ignored the older man and fixed his gaze on Vaan talking over the sudden sickness roiling in his gut, 'How? How did they propose to do this?' he asked in a tone of voice so rigidly controlled that it hissed from between his clenched teeth.

Vaan looked taken aback by his tone but answered honestly, 'I don't know. Ashe had most of her meetings with Mayhew alone. All I know is that she was getting more and more angry with him and then she just stopped paying for his research. Kytes said it had something to do with their,' Vaan paused and carefully enunciated the last word, 'methodology.'

Suspicion met terrified conjecture in Balthier's mind and connections were made in rapid fire speed. Over and over the name Nabudis rolled through his thoughts coupled inseparably with that of Aeneas; the pieces slotting together to create a picture straight out of his nightmares.

It was all happening just like Cid had written; just as Balthier had always feared it would.

Balthier found himself beginning to laugh and the sound scared him just a little, 'The old man was right; gods damn it the bastard was right.'

'Huh?' Vaan and Basch exchanged a look that clearly forecast their dire prognostications in regards Balthier's remaining sanity; Balthier who suspected that sanity or the lack thereof was the least of his worries, ignored them both.

Without a word he left the war room in search of the Kytes the little mage. Sprinting up three flights of stone staircases without conscious thought, Basch and Vaan running dutifully at his heels, Balthier shoved open the door to Kytes library.

The mage himself had been filing books back on a shelf when the door crashed back on its hinges and a very determined Balthier strode forcefully into the room.

Kytes instinctively withdrew to the other side of the large table covered in book and intricate diagrams Kytes had been working on simultaneously. The small, thin young man with the thicket of brown hair blinked owlishly at the three invaders who shouldered into his library.

'Kytes I need the name of the older man who has been meeting Ashe regards Nabudis, and do not try and evade me or I will hold you directly responsible for any ill that befalls her Highness.'

Kytes stared at him with huge eyes before swallowing audibly, 'Kry……his name is Kry.'

Balthier simply closed his eyes as Kytes unwittingly confirmed the very worst of Balthier's fears with that single syllable name.

_Professor Felonion Kry……gods damn it, damn it, DAMN IT._

'Balthier…..who is this man, what is going on?'

Basch gripped his shoulders and forcibly turned Balthier to face him. Balthier opened his eyes and smoothly shook off the other man's hold. He could feel a strange, whimsical smile playing over his lips. At this moment he would welcome madness.

_Father was right; right about everything. History in the hands of man, my father's legacy and his curse. _

Balthier turned back to Kytes and in calm voice asked of the mage, 'By chance do you have notes or papers in regards the research these men were doing in Nabudis?'

Kytes eyes widened even further, until he looked quite comical. He nodded rapidly. 'I tried to warn her, but her Majesty…she wanted to make things better, and I don't think she really understood what these men were doing and I thought maybe I'd read the notes wrong…but then I was certain and…'

Balthier nodded, pieces of the puzzle falling like rain, sliding into place and creating a tragedy of epic proportions; a grand farce made from the very best of noble intentions.

'So you showed her what you had discovered, didn't you, Kytes? You told her what harm these men were doing with her consent and Ashe reacted as Ashe would, with moral indignation, and confronted these men, correct?'

For the first time Balthier saw the elaborate trap he and Ashe had fallen into in its entirety. He shook his head in quiet amazement as all his mistakes came home to roost at once.

'Yes,' Kytes lips were pale white, bloodless, 'I tried to tell her not too or to ask for another opinion, but her majesty did not want anyone to know about it, and she's my queen and I can't tell my queen what to do.'

'Of course not,' Balthier smiled at the artistry of the set-up. It was breath-taking, magnificent. 'When did her majesty confront Professor Kry and this Mayhew man?'

Kytes licked his lips, 'This morning. I was allowed to be there so I could tell them my findings.' Kytes shook his head, 'Those men, they knew what they were doing all along. I thought maybe they had done it by accident, but …..Her Majesty was so angry and she told them to leave Dalmasca and Nabudis and never to return.'

Balthier did not relinquish his hold on Kytes anxious gaze, 'And what did these men do?'

Kytes shook his head in obvious bafflement, 'Professor Kry was furious but the other man, Mayhew, did not seem so angry. He made the other man leave and they simply went. It was strange.'

Balthier was nodding his head. It was not so strange to him; not strange in the least.

'Hmm, and scant few hours later, for no apparent reason whatsoever, the Baknamy, who all know as a cowardly race, attack one of the largest cities in Ivalice and capture a Queen? How odd; how gods damned _beautifully_ arranged.'

'Balthier, what _is _it man? What is this all about?'

Balthier turned, smile scarring his face, towards Basch who was staring at him intensely, the usually staid man looking ready to leap into the fray at any moment to save Ashe.

Balthier smirked, obscenely, obscurely amused even as he felt sick to his stomach, 'I've been had, my good man. After a life time of artifice and pretence, I have been well and truly had. This was never about me, or pirates, this whole mess from the Quidion to the Baknamy, it has always been about Ashe.'


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen: Justifications and the actions of the damned**

_A/N: Ha-ha! Plot, plot….the plot is revealed….Finally!_

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Ashelia B'Nargen Dalmasca awoke to find her cheek squashed against a faintly reverberating metal plated floor. Her head hurt with a muffled, wet cloth stuffed into her ears intensity and there was a strangely foul taste in her mouth, a potent mix of dirt and burned tin.

Sitting up was far more difficult than she might have hoped and this was only partly due to the manacle clamped around her wrist that was connected to a chain bolted to the metal wall of her boxy cell.

Ashe looked about her at the open, force-field blocked entrance to the cell and the dull, metallic corridor beyond and then to the three metal crafted walls of her cage with keen interest. The cell contained a commode (which was something, Ashe supposed) but no bed.

Obviously her captors were fastidious and did not want the indignity of having to clear up a Queen's effluent but did not mind forcing a captive Queen to sleep on cold steel flooring.

Which was nothing less than Ashe had expected from her captors, but still, being right did nothing to improve her disposition. Captured again. It was no less galling this time than it had been all those years ago when she had been the 'guest' of Judge Magister Gist, aboard the Leviathan.

Ashe shifted herself, still on hands and knees, across to the right hand wall of her cell and placed her palm against the steel plating. A fine current of motion, a constant vibration, ran through the walls and floor of her cell. She knew that feeling, the juddery, ear-popping sensation. She was in an airship!

While as this realisation was useful, possibly essential, to any escape plans Ashe would formulate, at the moment it did not help much. She was in an airship, and quite a large one, if she was any judge, but that was all she could ascertain.

Oh, but that was not quite true.

Memory of her defeat and capture rolled behind her eyes as Ashe carefully replayed her last movements before waking up here.

Ruefully Ashe found herself berating herself for not realising that sooner or later something like this would happen. After all nothing good ever came of things when she awoke in the morning before Balthier. But that morning (Ashe did not know the time now and did not know if she had been asleep mere hours or days) she had awoken before Balthier, with a slight brandy headache, but otherwise feeling triumphant and well-pleased with herself.

She remembered that she had waged a half-hearted debate within herself as to whether she should rise and start the day. Kytes had wanted to talk to her about something urgent since the day before but Balthier's new drama had distracted her, and of course Mayhew and Kry had insisted on an audience with her.

Yet for all that she had things to do, Ashe had had little will to do them. Balthier, amazingly still asleep, had one arm flung across her and was utterly adorable in his slumber – primarily because while oblivious to the waking world Balthier's face lost its perpetually hawkish cast and calculating sharpness and he slept with bottom lip vaguely pouting and expression serene.

Ashe liked to look at him while he slept and wonder what he dreamed of. Sometimes that relaxed mouth would form words, though she could not decipher or hear them, but once she had been sure he had murmured her name while sleeping and Ashe had been delighted with this development (she had pried and teased him about it once he awoke and had the pleasure of Balthier appearing honestly baffled and mildly embarrassed).

In the here and now Ashe broke free of her happy reverie long enough to stifle the worry that Balthier and the children might have been targeted, or harmed, in the attack on the palace. This worry immediately blossomed into anxiety over all her staff and attendants within the palace who might have come to harm. Savagely Ashe told herself to control herself; there was nothing she could do at the present and worrying herself sick would help no one.

Ashe had no doubt that Balthier would have ensured the children's safety and then his own. She also knew that Balthier was out there somewhere hounding down her captors and gathering her allies to her cause. All Ashe had to do was ensure her own life until help arrived.

That and make damn sure her captors learned the folly of kidnapping her; metal cage or no, she would rend the bastards to bits with her own hands if need be.

Ashe was savouring thoughts of bloody vengeance when the retracting door leading away from the narrow corridor she was in opened with a hiss of displaced air and one of her captors strolled in.

Ashe, sitting on the floor with a chain around her wrist, glared with unabashed hatred at the parody of a spectre that had led to her downfall.

'My lady Ashe, you are awake; I'm glad.'

The man before her had a stocky, muscular build and fine almost silvery blonde hair that fell in soft tresses around a face that still retained an adorable youthful roundness. His clear eyes were alight with a soft warmth. He wore the traditional fighting garb of House Nabradia and the smile he bestowed upon her was the smile of a dead man.

'If you would address me, sir, do so with your true voice and true face. You are not Rasler and this pretence offends my eyes.'

It did offend her, but to begin with, when caught by surprise by a gaggle of invading Baknamy in her private study, the sudden appearance of her long dead first love had been enough of a shock to leave her open to ambush by said spectre.

The last thing she had remembered was Rasler lowering the blowgun from his lips, the sleep-potion dosed dart a stinging pain in her neck, as she fell like a pile of old clothes to the floor of her study.

'Offends you, why?' the false Rasler asked in his soft voice that once, many years passed, she would have wept blood to hear just once more. Now the sound grated on her nerves; it was anathema to her that Rasler's sainted memory should be so abused.

'Because I am no fool, master Mayhew, and know who you truly are.' Ashe stated coldly.

The image of the dead man before her shimmered and rippled becoming the, no less unwelcome, form of the red headed master Mayhew. He smiled at her and it made Ashe almost physically sick, though she showed her reaction not at all.

'I'm impressed.' Mayhew squatted down before the buzzing force-field, which smelt to Ashe like magick, but had the look of cold science to her eyes. In Mayhew's hand was the twin of Balthier's Quidion of Artifice. It winked in the light and Ashe winced as the quicksilver light hit her eyes. 'You know what this is, don't you?'

Ashe refused to say anything at all, just stared back at the man with all the regal stoniness she could muster, which despite her predicament, was still considerable.

Mayhew did not seem perturbed by her silence, instead he continued to smile softly, his deep green eyes gleaming with a subtle sort of madness Ashe had always seen but chosen, in her zeal to restore Nabudis, to ignore.

'I would like to take this opportunity to assure you, your majesty, that myself and Professor Kry wish you no harm.'

Ashe gave the man a look of withering contempt, 'You have apprehended a Queen, I will see you hang for it.' she told him without pity. Mayhew's smooth, almost boyish brow puckered in a frown.

'Will you not even listen to reason, your majesty? Will you listen to your timid boyling of a mage instead of myself and Professor Kry? Are you really prepared to put the lives of a few hundred degenerate Baknamy above the possible restoration of your husband's kingdom?'

'My husband does not have a kingdom of his own,' Ashe pointed out with dry contempt, refusing to grant this whinging man the honour of seeing her angry, 'and I do not appreciate being whined at. Do what you will, you snivelling wretch, but know this, when I am free I will make you sorry you ever drew breath.'

Mayhew seemed to gloss over her threats and insults altogether, or perhaps, simply did not hear them, 'That man does not deserve you, majesty, the son of Dr Cid, that murderous bastard, has no right to stand at your side.'

Ashe arched both brows, while behind her eyes she saw red, 'I see. So you would not only impersonate my first husband but now you would add to your insults against me by impugning my second? I also note that you must be deluded indeed to dare accuse Balthier of murder when you and your precious Professor Kry have been committing genocide against the Baknamy _under my name_.'

Mayhew shook his head angrily, red hair falling heavily over his brow in his almost child-like agitation, 'No, no, no. You do not understand. Yes, I agree that the deaths of the Baknamy are unfortunate, but it is for a greater good. The restoration of Nabudis,' suddenly Mayhew reached for her and yelped as the force field burned his hand, 'Majesty, please, you of all people must understand that sometimes blood, even innocent blood, must be spilled in order to set right horrible wrongs.'

Ashe sucked in an outraged breath, 'How dare you? I have never spilled innocent blood willingly for any reason. How dare you compare us. You were killing Baknamy without my knowledge. Killing them using my treasury's Gil to buy your monstrous implements and all the while you dared feed me pretty lies of your exploits and good intentions. You disgust me.'

Mayhew's green eyes flashed with his own anger as he cradled his burned hand to his dark blue frock-coated chest, 'You are one to talk, Majesty. You have said yourself, you are no fool. At any time you could have asked us how we acquired our results, but you did not. It was only that nosy, whiny brat of a book-keeper that bothered to study my reports and discover the truth.'

Mayhew rose to his feet anger twisting his apple-cheeked features as he looked down on her in his proper finery of white lace trimmed blue velvet, 'You were happier not knowing. You are only angry now because you feel you 'ought be.'

Ashe leapt to her feet and almost fell down again when the chain about her wrist snapped taut as she advanced in fury upon Mayhew, 'You despicable, vile, pitiful excuse for a man. You are not fit to wipe the arse of a Baknamy. Get out of my sight.'

Mayhew shook his head, undergoing another mercurial change in mood from anger to conciliatory sweetness. He spread his hands in a show of deference, 'Forgive me, your majesty, I was quite monstrously rude. This is not at all how I wanted our talk to go.'

Ashe could only stare at the man in outraged shock that rendered her momentarily mute.

Mayhew paced across the width of the force field blocked entrance to Ashe's cell (which she thought might have been designed as a cargo storage room) with his hands clasped behind his back. Ashe watched Mayhew pace and chew his bottom lip as he considered his words.

'Kry and I brought you onboard so that we could explain to you, without the distractions, and ignorance of others, interfering. I am absolutely certain that you will once again enthusiastically endorse our endeavours once you understand all the facts.'

Ashe realised she was gaping in appalled disbelief and immediately clamped her jaws together again, 'You are insane. You kidnapped me. I am not going to listen to a word you say.'

Mayhew pivoted with a dancers grace to face her, green eyes glowing with a sulphuric inner light, 'But you like that, don't you? You are rather partial to being kidnapped and dominated by sky pirates, or so I have heard.' Mayhew purred moving towards the force field.

Ashe took an involuntary step back as she stared at the man with sick incomprehension, 'What in the name of the gods does that mean? I have never allowed anyone to dominate me, and you are not a pirate.'

Mayhew smiled silkily, 'Yes I am.'

Mayhew continued to speak dreamily as he pressed a button on a control panel on the outside wall of Ashe's cell to de-activate the force field. Ashe, chained to the wall, could do nothing except back further into the cell away from Mayhew who advanced on her with the smiling stealth of a night predator.

'I have been a pirate disguised as a scholar, a scholar draped in criminality, ever since your filthy, traitorous, lying bastard of a husband blew my brother's brains out. I have been for the last twelve years, waiting for my moment, learning all I can, until this moment. Until the time I could avenge my poor brother and redeem my soul.'

Ashe felt the blood drain from her face as little odd facts and fragments of confusion came together to form a sickeningly complex tapestry. Nabudis, the Quidion Coins, Balthier and Aeneas, all of it merged and blended behind her eyes.

'You……your brother?……It can't be…' Ashe whispered, dumbfounded.

_Balthier never said Aeneas had a brother; but then, perhaps he does not know? It all makes sense……and yet so much makes no sense at all!_

Mayhew grinned, quick and savage, and suddenly he was on her grabbing her and throwing Ashe up against the wall, wrapping his long fingers around her neck as he crushed her body against the wall with the weight of his own, 'Yes,' he breathed, breath hot against the shell of her ear, 'I knew you'd figure it out fast; much faster than Bunansa, stupid arrogant fool.' Mayhew's tongue flicked out and he licked Ashe's cheek.

Ashe reacted instinctively, with primal force. She lunged forward and clamped her teeth around the tip of Mayhew's nose at the same time that she threw her weight against him, raising one knee to slam him in the groin.

Mayhew staggered back with a vile stream of curses and crumbled to one knee before her. Unable to run, Ashe instead kicked the man in the head as hard as she could.

He fell like a felled tree and Ashe slid down the wall panting with exertion, rage and fading adrenaline. She stared at the unconscious Mayhew in silence. At least until the sound of clapping dragged her eyes to the open door of her cage.

Professor Kry dragged his arthritic, bent over form into sight.

'Well done; Mayhew would have had his way with you while you were chained. It is not just vengeance that led him towards the darker side of life.'

Ashe felt her lips pull back from her teeth, 'So now I have dispensed with the monkey the organ grinder has decided to take his time to gloat?' she hissed, tilting her chin proudly and spitting out the unpleasant salty taste of Mayhew's blood from her mouth.

Kry regarded her with wet, crusted beady eyes shaded by thick, unruly white eyebrows, 'Organ grinder, eh? I suppose that's apt. Mayhew was my assistant during the Nethicite experiments. I was the second lead researcher of the project, under Dr Cidolfus Bunansa himself.'

Ashe swallowed, this man's calm, flat, uninterested voice drained the violence and anguish from her being. Kry seemed to have the demeanour of death come to a party, sapping the vitality and energy from any situation.

'What project?' Ashe whispered.

Kry stroked his long, messy white beard with his knobbed, gnarled right hand. Ashe noticed that he wore a large onyx ring on one finger, 'It had no name because we did not know which kingdom would be our testing site; Nabradia or Dalmasca, it made no difference to Cid and he let Vayne decide. All that mattered was that Cid could test his Nethicite bomb on a densely populated area rich with flora and fauna.'

Ashe felt bile rise in her throat, 'Sweet gods, Vaan was right, you and Mayhew were involved in the weapon that destroyed Nabudis.'

Kry fixed her with beady eyes as he stood in the threshold of her cell, 'No one save Cid truly knew what the Nethicite bomb would do. He was jealous of his creation and made sure all research teams only worked on their particular tasks and did not communicate with anyone save their own colleagues. I was his second, and once his superior, but he would not tell me what the bomb would do.'

Kry shuffled into the room, his dull clothing in browns and muddy greens brushed together, ill-shapen layer to ill-shapen layer, like the crackle of dead leaves, 'Can you imagine what we lowly Draklor peons experienced when we watched the bomb hit? Something we had helped create annihilated a kingdom that had stood for centuries. We were guilty of genocide in ignorance.'

Ashe felt herself pressing against the wall and away from Kry, afraid of the old stick of a man more than she ever could be of Mayhew. Kry's voice, rasping and distant, formed academic queries and posed hypothetical questions while discussing the deaths of thousands of people.

'Mayhew took it hard,' Kry continued to muse as he poked the insensate man in the ribs with his toe, 'He was already suffering due to the unfortunate death of his older brother. I knew, of course, that Mayhew was giving his sky pirate brother information on the project to sell on the black market, but peeved as I was with Cid, I thought it would be poetic justice if Rozzaria discovered Cid's plans before he could enact them.'

As Ashe watched in acute discomfort Kry dissolved in dry, wheezing, chuffing exhalations of air that she belatedly realised was meant, in any other hume, to be laughter.

'Irony of ironies that it was Cid's own wayward boy that killed Aeneas and put paid to any threat to Cid's plans. I wonder if Ffamran knows that; knew that he was his father's accidental catspaw even then? Eh, no matter. It is irrelevant.'

Ashe could taste bile and burned tin in the back of her throat as she swallowed convulsively, 'What am I here for? Why have _you_ brought me here?

Ashe had always known that Kry was the true power in the partnership and Mayhew merely the smiling figurehead, the more socially palatable of the two. Whatever twisted desires and hatreds Mayhew might harbour against Balthier and wish to take out on her, Kry had another objective in capturing her.

Kry nodded his head slowly, dark wet eyes, clouded with the beginnings of twin cataracts, blinked at her, 'Eh, leverage, mehaps, a hostage to ensure no other nation in Ivalice shall interfere with my work. Mayhew wants you. He has decided that you, and claiming you, is a more fitting vengeance against Ffamran than merely killing him, but for me, you are merely leverage, and bait.'

Ashe's gaze darted in disgust towards Mayhew at the mention of the man's true designs on her but then leapt back to Mayhew sharply, 'Bait? Against whom….?' she trailed off, realising that there was only one person it could be. 'Balthier. It is him you want.'

Kry nodded once more, expressionless and crusty, breath wheezing in his narrow, hunched over chest, 'The boy outwitted me with the second Quidion of Artifice coin; I'd hoped to capture him while under a memory curse.' the man stroked his beard, 'Though in retrospect, considering Mayhew's mania, it is probably better to do things this way.'

The man trailed off descending into his own thoughts, still stroking and tugging on his beard; gnarled fingers dragging through the knots in his beard with audible wrenching tugs. Ashe worked on controlling her breathing as she watched the old man, 'Why do you want Balthier? He had nothing to do with his father's work.'

Her lips twisted distastefully as she formed the term 'work'. She was loath to call genocide 'work' but she had not the time to open a moral debate on the matter; she had more pressing concerns at present.

Kry's craggy face underwent something of a transformation as his lips pulled back from a top row of overly large yellowed teeth. Ashe caught herself on an instinctive recoil as she realised the monstrous sneer was this odious man's attempt at a smile, 'He had nothing to do with his father's work?' Kry doubled over further as he cackled dryly.

'You are a fool of a girl after all; a fool who knows nothing of Cid or his work.' Kry sneered as he straightened up turning slowly and shambling towards the threshold of Ashe's cage.

Ashe leapt to her feet, 'Wait!'

Kry ignored her as he powered up the force field with Mayhew still lying in the middle of the floor of Ashe's cell; she was effectively trapped inside with a man who hated her husband with a passion and who had designs on her as well.

Kry turned back to her through the haze of the strange energy field, 'Mayhew has been useful. I will reward him by allowing him his just desserts.' Kry's lips lifted once again from his over-sized teeth. 'If you survive Mayhew's pleasures you may have the compensation of seeing Cid's work overturned and Nabudis restored.'

Then Kry shuffled away back down the corridor and out of sight through the sliding door, leaving Ashe alone with a man who wished to revenge himself on a man by ravishing his wife, and too many questions to count flying through her head.

Ashe was left with the sickening fear, a realisation that seemed to come from outside herself, that her ambitions, and Balthier's desperate attempt to run from his father, had somehow led them to this moment.

That the fear that motivated Balthier, and the desperate need to set right the wrong that had taken her first love from Ashe, had led them to Kry and Mayhew, a foe they could not vanquish; for how could they triumph when the only way to win was for Ashe to give up Nabudis forever and for Balthier to stop running and become his father?

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_A/N: y'know I honestly think Mayhew and Kry are the best villains I've written…..what do you all think? ;)_


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter Seventeen: the tedium of torture and the dull roar of disaffected grief**

_A/N: Disclaimer: I love Cid. It is officially; he is great! History in the hands of man!!_

_Ahem, umm, anyway, this chapter might be a little confusing, don't worry as it is supposed to be…just sit back and enjoy the ride! ;)_

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If there was one thing Balthier was proud of (and in fact there were a great many things he was proud of – but that was not the point) it was that Balthier, under any of the many guises he had used, had never, ever, engaged in torture as an means of enticing information.

He had lied, swindled, blackmailed, seduced and otherwise employed any number of underhanded techniques to get what he wanted but he had never inflicted pain on another living being simply to acquire momentary gain.

Under circumstances such as those he now found himself in, chained to a wall of the Pharos that still stood, by wrist and ankle with a metallic choke collar around his neck, Balthier clung to that moral superiority with a certain, faintly desperate, tenacity.

Needless to say, life was not going all that well for him at the moment.

A stirring on the wall opposite him was enough of a change in the general monotony that Balthier decided to crane his neck to look, despite the pain this caused him, 'Ah, Citizen Basch, you're awake. I trust you slept well?'

The other man, having been, much as Balthier himself, stripped from the waist up and divested of (in Balthier's opinion) a simply staggering number of concealed weapons, looked across the narrow expanse that separated them with worn blue eyes.

'By the gods Balthier what happened?'

Although it was not remotely amusing, and frankly he was feeling anything but chipper, Balthier felt his lips curving into an amused smirk seemingly of their own accord, 'The plan has hit a slight snag; one that is entirely your fault I might add.'

Basch, hanging in his chains as uncomfortably as Balthier was his own, squinted at him, 'What do you mean….' comprehension dawned, and the older man suddenly let loose a harsh curse that caused Balthier to quirk his eyebrow's in ironic surprise, 'Gods damn it, Rikken and Elza attacked us when we set down in Balfonheim to refuel before heading to the Pharos. I remember now.'

Balthier, who also remembered the moment that Rikken and Elza had appeared to 'greet' them as he had docked the Strahl in the empty (for the time being) aerodrome in Balfonheim, shook his head as memory descended.

_Some long honed sense of self-preservation had put the hackles up on Balthier's neck and led him to reach for his gun as he eyed the approach of two people he had known on a professional level for over a decade. _

_Basch, seasoned warrior he undoubtedly was, was nevertheless too trusting of the wrong sort of people for both their sakes. _

_The older man had moved to greet the pair and Balthier had no time to call him back. Elza's crossbow shot took him in the gut before either Basch or Balthier could do more than blink in mild surprise. Basch went down hard as the magicite tipped crossbow bolt twanged in his flesh. _

_Balthier had managed to fire his gun at Rikken's head in warning before Rikken could advance on him but then he had been forced to duck to avoid a bolt from Elza's bow. The bolt had lodged in the hull of the Strahl and Balthier had momentarily seen red, even as his mind assured him that despite appearances, this was not Rikken and Elza he was facing._

_They, the true Rikken and Elza, knew better than to dare touch his Strahl; shooting at him was all well and good, gods knew they had never been friends and professional differences were a matter of course, but the Strahl was sacrosanct. The real Rikken and Elza knew this._

_Balthier hesitated to shoot these two people dead; not just because he was not certain that it was not the real Rikken and Elza, but also because a living hostage would be invaluable at this time. _

_That hesitation, part loyalty to the people his attackers might be, and part strategy was nevertheless his downfall. _

_Balthier might have wanted a hostage, but his attackers, whoever they were, already had one. _

_As Balthier fought off (the possibly false) Rikken and headed for the Strahl and the safety of the interior of his airship, he caught in the corner of his eye the sight of (the possibly false) Elza with her crossbow pointed at Basch's head._

_Basch, bleeding out from a gut wound the very twin of Fran's, save for the fact that Fran had been shot with a gun and Basch a crossbow, was nevertheless trying to fight back. He threw a punch, weak by Basch's standards, towards Elza's jaw but the woman, whoever she was, smoothly moved to avoid the blow. She raised the crossbow and pulled down on the trigger._

'_Wait!' _

_Balthier was perhaps more surprised than anyone else present, for this debacle of an ambush, to realise that it was his voice that had sounded in the otherwise strangely silent melee. That it was by his volition that he dropped his rifle to the floor and raised his hands in surrender._

_When he saw the nasty smile that slid over supposed Rikken's face Balthier was absolutely certain that the man was not the man he knew as an ally and once upon a time co-conspirator. _

_The Scourge spell that hit him in the mid-rift with the force of a sledge hammer, knocking him off his feet and sending him skidding across the grated floor of the aerodrome docking bay on his back, was an unpleasant inevitability. _

_Unconsciousness could not have come soon enough as far as Balthier was concerned; not so much because of the debilitating pain of the Scourge spell eradiating the cells of his body and sapping his vitality, but because he did not want to be conscious and forced to face the knowledge that two people who had never quite been his friends, were almost certainly dead. Nor did he want to face the reality that it was almost certainly his fault if they were. _

Back in his less than salubrious present, in these less than spectacular surroundings, Balthier addressed Basch with dry indifference.

'Hmm, you have had the good fortune to be unconscious for some, hmm, ten hours, maybe. Needless to say I have been awake all that time and quite frankly the tedium nearly drove me to distraction.'

Basch ignored him and turned his own head from left to right as much as his own collar would allow, 'The Pharos; second ascent?'

'Technically this is the last ascent now, there is not much left of the third floor.'

Basch turned from studying the small stone walled room they were stuck in to study Balthier with the same intensity, 'You do not seem overly concerned, Balthier.'

If he had been physically capable of it Balthier would have shrugged. In lieu of that gesture he smiled faintly, whimsically, completely at odds with both his predicament and the seriousness of his words, 'This will not be the first time I have been left to rot in a sealed room, Basch. I have yet to find a means of torture that can best me.'

'Aye,' Basch agreed notably raising his scarred eyebrow. Basch also knew a great deal about the extent and limitations of torture and its affects on the hume body and spirit. Basch looked towards the furthest wall of the stuffy room.

'There is a draught; clearly we are not to suffocate. The entrance was bricked up after we were chained here, I take it?'

'Hmm, one of those delightful false walls, that are dotted hither and thither across this ascent. You remember our first visit to these climes; Vaan ended up trapped in one of the rooms beyond, and we almost elected to leave him?'

Basch scoffed a laugh, 'As I recall you _did_ leave him; it was only when Penelo questioned where Vaan had gone that you were forced to admit you had left him several stairways below us.'

'He was perfectly safe,' Balthier could feel his own, near grimace of a smirk shift in genuine mirth at the memory, 'Admit it, Penelo was not the only one who noticed Vaan's absence, she was simply the only one who _cared.' _

Balthier was honestly pleased when Basch chuffed a laugh that he quickly stifled, 'Yes, well, perhaps it would have been better had you bricked up Reddas instead. The man's tendency to moralise and speak down to Ashe was inappropriate.'

Balthier chuckled quietly amused to find that the impassive and irritatingly serene older man could take a dislike to someone other than him, 'Yes, he was an arrogant bore, wasn't he? No idea why he chose to turn pirate, the man was too much a stickler for the law.'

Basch sighed signifying a return to his more dour and serious mien, 'Balthier we must discuss our predicament before our captors come back. Why for would Rikken and Elza turn on you? I had thought you allies.'

Balthier's eyes sought out a crack running through the rough, rocky ceiling of the hidden room they were in. He did not relish admitting that he very much suspected that Rikken and Elza were no more, and that their killers now wore their faces.

Eventually however the weight of Basch's patient gaze on his own forced him to answer, or at least form words, 'I have always thought that allies are perfectly placed to betray a trust, more so than an enemy with whom there is no trust to betray in the first place.'

'Balthier you are talking in circles, more so than usual, what ails you?'

He only just barely registered Basch's mildly irked question, some errant sound, the faint echo of a voice from memory, had reached his ears and he now strained to catch a hint of it again.

'Do you hear that?' he asked as a very definitely sound of footsteps approached just outside the false wall of their sealed stone cage.

Basch immediately tensed, fists clenching in his shackles, Balthier who had long since lost feeling in his fingers, remained as relaxed as he could be – it was not as though he could spring to attack as soon as his captors showed themselves, so why expend the wasted effort?

The scraping sound of someone on the other side of the false wall carefully removing two or three of the thick, loosely packed together bricks from the wall travelled smoothly across to both he and Basch.

A moment later a small, glowing, piece of technology, powered by a small Mist generator was carefully dropped onto the floor of the cell by a hand that stretched through the purpose built hole in the wall.

Now Balthier tensed as he instantly recognised what the device was and what its presence bespoke. Basch noticed the look of deep trepidation that took up residence upon Balthier's brow and looked a question to him, though he would not speak while their captors might be listening.

Balthier had eyes only for the glowing circular contraption with the clear glass dome filled with pale blue green glowing Mist; with a whirring sound like a hornets nest stirred into fury, the device powered up.

A voice floated from the device; the modulations of the insultingly cheerful, avuncular tone were reflected in the flickering, shifting Mist within the glass dome of the voice recording device. Orange streaked blue, aquamarine and tourmaline, a rippling veldt of colour refracting a world of nuanced speech. Balthier closed his eyes lest the colours dazzle him.

'……shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……..research log day two hundred and nineteen. Things are going great guns at the moment. I have full confidence that the project shall be satisfactorily completed in time for Vayne's grand venture.'

Basch sucked in a breath on the wall opposite as he too placed the identity of the voice. Balthier forced himself to turn and face the other man and open his eyes. All he could do however was to nod in recognition.

From the machine the voice rolled on, 'Had some interesting news today. I have long suspected that my revered former tutor, that crusty old reprobate, has been contriving to thwart my advances. Poor misguided fool has not the wit to realise that no man, and no god, can halt progress. Still a tit-bit of some worth came upon my ears of a debacle in Balfonheim and the potential sale of certain blueprints that should ne'er have seen the light of day.'

Balthier gritted his teeth as the jovial voice dissolved into deep belly laughs, an impossibly infectious sound that twisted a knife in Balthier's gut, just as it did every time he heard it, preserved and contained within that damnable device.

'Balthier….what is this?' that Basch chose to speak aloud suggested that there captor had left; but then this was torture enough, was it not; far worse an ordeal than whips or thumb screws.

'Apparently sky pirates are a rough lot, but what they lack in civility they make up for in decisiveness, and like such backwards and ill-educated folk, they cling to a code of honour and fair-play. They will sell bastardised swords and shoddy magick on the black market to a gang of ne-er-do-wells but they balk at selling to foreign governments at times of war; ah yes, the contradictory nature of the uninformed.'

Balthier tried not to register the shifts and changes in inflection of the voice as it rolled onwards and outward, an insidious, invisible and intangible wave of memory, but he could not help it.

Within the canvas of his mind he saw his father in his mind's eye; he saw his father gesticulate grandly as he spoke into the device, his wretched Venat silent sentry at his back.

It grated upon his nerves that to Balthier the image he conjured using memory's deceptive palette was almost pleasing to him. He had wanted his father dead, and seen to it that he did die, but he had never wished him ill; never wished his father anything but happiness. Sometimes the hypocrisy alone of that confused sentiment kept him up at nights.

'Still, here is the rub, and rub it is indeed. Word comes to me from my sources sent far and wide, my little birds of gossip sent on permanent migration these past four years, that the identity of the particular pirate who so decisively and pointedly ended the threat to Draklor security, and some might say saved my years of toil from the jaws of failure, is one who to me is of particular import.'

Balthier had heard this very rambling, disjointed and confusing monologue before. He had listened to every word recorded in these secret machines, his father's hidden legacy that only he would know to look for hundreds of times; but now, inexplicably, the words gained hidden meaning, a subtext that Balthier suddenly felt he could unravel. His heart hammered in his chest as he listened more intently. There must be a reason his captors had chosen to play back this particular extract, after all.

But what purpose, he wondered?

Just as his damned and blasted father had said, there was the rub. If he could only piece the pieces of the puzzle together and figure out the reasons for all this, then perhaps, he could find the means to turn the tables on his enemies and come closer to finding Ashe.

It was ironic, in many ways, that he had chosen to leave Dalmasca, even at such a time as this, to come here to the Ridorana seeking answers, and instead seemingly walked into his enemies' carefully baited trap.

Just how long had his enemies, whoever the bastards were, been planning this?

He knew it was all connected; Aeneas, the Phoenix returned, the Baknamy and Ashe, and professor Kry the 'crusty old reprobate' himself. His father's mentor turned subordinate and a man Balthier remembered as the faint ghost of a child's instinctual loathing for a strange man with a dirty beard and foul smelling old clothes.

It was all connected and the threads all led to Cid.

'Yes, yes, indeed, exactly so; t'was he, ghost these last four years and now, lo, returned to haunt me with bloody tidings. The twists of fate have made of these events a picture of irony. I am quite tickled by it; I must commend those responsible for so vexing me with good news and ill, mixed together so. I have much to think on now, and precious little time to do so. Ffamran, my boy, t'would be better you were dead.'

It was not any particular turn of phrase or single word of his father's that finally created the bridge that allowed Balthier to cross his thoughts and make the definitive connection, thus revealing the web of intrigue he had fallen afoul of.

It was nothing so prosaically contrived.

Instead it was something more primitive; a boy's regret that he was not, and could never be, all his father had wished him to be mingled with a man's fear that one day he would look in the mirror and see his father staring back at him.

Balthier began to chuckle, harshly but brightly, a strange sound, as he finally understood. He had heard his father announce, in recorded memory and seemingly for no reason that he wished him dead a hundred times at least. He had absorbed the harsh words without understanding the context, but now, with the benefit of recent hindsight, he understood.

He knew; he finally knew why Aeneas had had to die. Why he had had to pull the trigger on his friend, and why Aeneas had refused to tell him what it was he had stolen from Draklor. His friend had been protecting him, even as he betrayed him.

Balthier stopped laughing with such an abrupt shift that Basch, who had been watching him the way one looked upon a rapid wolf before putting it out of its misery, with a mixture of fear and pity, found himself deeply disconcerted.

'Balthier?'

He turned to face the other man, as his father's voice died away and the device powered down; the message had been conveyed and Balthier now understood what he needed too, and any facts that still eluded him would soon be revealed.

Professor Kry would see to that.

'Basch we have a small window of time; I require your assistance.'

'Aye? You have considered some means of escape?'

Balthier smirked and it was both sardonic and cruel, 'Escape is not the goal. I have work to do.'

Basch continued to consider him with obvious wariness in his eyes, 'I like this not, Balthier, you have a look about you,' Basch shook his head as much as he could, 'Aye, you have the look of your father in you.'

Balthier chuckled, glancing negligently at the recording globe, the Mist sluggish as its ghostly hidden voice slept, its mission accomplished.

'Oh, have no fear on that, Basch, my good man, I am not my father.'

……_.indeed, not my father, never my father, I am so very much worse than he……_

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_A/N: next up, Vaan, Filo, a cart full of weaponry and a hoard of furious Baknamy! ;)_


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter Eighteen: The thinking man's Nabudis**

_A/N: Update, update, update. I'm on roll at the moment. Plus, 66 reviews for seventeen chapters! Again, I am flattered, heartened, and hugely grateful to everyone. Also I have had a couple of calls in reviews for more Vaan, so here he is, my dopey Zen philosopher, taking his turn on this stage! _

_Also the furious horde (and I have the right spelling this time!) of Baknamy was temporary delayed en-route, but they will make an appearance, I promise! ;)_

_And finally, not only is this the third update in a week but this is a double-whammy too, please enjoy responsibly!_

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Vaan was thinking. Contrary to popular opinion, thinking was an activity Vaan indulged in on a fairly regular basis.

Vaan liked thinking; it was an enjoyable hobby.

While Filo jabbered away (and he _was_ listening to her, really, it's just that listening to Filo only took up some of his attention and it wasn't as though he didn't know exactly what she was going to say before she said it anyway) Vaan slogged cheerfully, steadily, and persistently through the clinging, dark, strange smelling mud and iridescent waters of the Nabreus swamps.

Leading his hand-picked contingent of soldiers through the Mist shrouded bog that was the Nebreus wastelands towards the shadowy mirage of the former palace of Nabudis, Vaan had little to do but think and wait for the fortified, Chocobo drawn cart full of weaponry to get stuck in the mud again.

_Vaan you know what to do; don't disappoint me now._

That had been Balthier's parting shot, as he and Basch left for the Ridorana Cataract. Vaan wished he could go too, he missed the freedom to go wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, but that was not the role he'd chosen for himself, at least not in the end.

Ashe's Cabinet and privy councillors had expected that the Dalmascan Knights would mobilise and go to meet the large congregation of Baknamy in the Nableus Deadlands, so it had been easy enough for Vaan to leave the Palace. Some of Ashe's Privy Council assumed all the guns and knives and armour he packed into the cart were for the purpose of fighting Baknamy; getting revenge on them for invading the palace.

Vaan didn't see any reason to tell them otherwise; he'd figured out years ago that people were happier believing what they wanted to believe and didn't like to be corrected.

Vaan liked to see people happy; if he didn't he would have pointed out a long time ago that he was not an idiot.

It was, in fact, a little known truth, but Vaan was a vast and wide thinker and a spectacularly good manipulator of people. Balthier hadn't chosen him as an apprentice because of his good looks, after all.

Vaan knew what Balthier was planning, while acting like he wasn't planning anything; Vaan knew because he had figured it out himself. Vaan was good at figuring things out, and he was brilliant at saying nothing when he did so.

Sometimes Vaan thought about telling those closest to him about the things that went on in his head; but then he figured they probably didn't really want to know.

Even Penelo (who possibly, maybe, he still loved but would never be so crass as to tell her so; never be so heartless as to admit that it broke his heart to see her marry Larsa even as he walked her down the aisle and handed her off to her Imperial bridegroom) didn't really know Vaan the way she thought she did. Still, it made her happy to think she did so Vaan left her to her misconceptions.

'Vaan are you listening to me?'

'Huh?'

A gauntleted feminine hand, attached to a leanly muscled feminine forearm, draped in chainmail, smacked him in the gut, 'You never listen; Penelo was right.'

'Not always,' Vaan immediately replied, because she wasn't and it needed to be said.

'Hmfph,' Filo tilted her chin and jerked her head proudly. Filo liked to hear of Penelo's faults and Vaan, as stated, liked to make people happy. Still Penelo had been married (to someone who was not Vaan) for two years, and he really thought Filo should stop this game of one-up-man-ship now; especially as Penelo had never known about the game to begin with.

You see, Vaan knew Filo was in love with him (or at least thought she was) and he was fine with that. He just hadn't decided what to do about it, or if he needed to do anything about it at all. Vaan was patient and tended to take the view that if he procrastinated long enough a resolution would present itself eventually.

'So, _Captain, _what's the plan?' Filo chirped up again, tossing the thick fringe of her reddish brown hair from her eyes, impish grin lighting her face up.

Vaan shrugged, 'We find the Baknamy and ask them why they attacked the Palace,'

Filo frowned, 'We're just going to talk to them; after what they did?'

'Yeah, 'cause we don't know what Dalmasca did to them. Once we know why they attacked we can fix the problem.'

Filo stopped short and the disciplined and silent soldiers busily eavesdropping on their Captain and Sergeant's conversation walked into the back of her.

'Hey! Watch where you're walking; now fall in line men.' Filo snapped. Vaan kept walking, as did the Chocobos pulling the cart.

Filo quickened her steps to catch up with him, 'Vaan, they're _Baknamy_,' she crinkled her nose adorably in distaste.

Vaan shook his head. He had never claimed to be a particularly accomplished thinker (he liked to think he was something of a dedicated amateur) but sometimes the lack of foresight of the people around him upset Vaan.

'Hey, if another kingdom came and started attacking my friends and family I'd attack 'em back, in fact, I _did _attack the Empire.'

Filo ran around him so she was walking backwards in front of Vaan, she frowned at him in exasperation, 'But _we _didn't attack the Baknamy. I'd never even seen one of the things 'til they swamped the Palace.'

Vaan shrugged at he walked, 'Yeah, true, but I think maybe Ashe did attack them, or let someone else do it. Though she didn't know they were going to do it. Ignorance isn't really a defence when you're a Queen though. Doesn't help the Baknamy any either.' Vaan added philosophical in tone.

Filo scrunched her face up even further as she tried to wade through the sense in that statement. So absorbed in trying to understand Vaan (he might have told her not to bother, but that would have merely upset her) was she that Filo failed to pay attention to the terrain and walked backwards into a deep pool of stagnant water.

'Ohh! Eeeww,' immediately she hopped out of the water and started kicking out her leg to shake the water from her metal boot, 'Yuck, you could have warned me Vaan.'

Vaan shrugged as he unsheathed his sword and strained his hearing for the telltale sub-aquatic vibrations of the Banshees howl he knew would be coming shortly, 'Not my fault you were walking backwards through a swamp, Fi.'

At that moment the Banshee erupted from the water behind Filo and clasped clammy, flaccid white arms around her mid-rift intent on hauling her under the water.

Vaan reached out and grabbed hold of Filo by the edge of her chest plate as the rest of his men swarmed forward, swords drawn. Filo was already striking at the bloodless arms of the Banshee with her short dagger, gouging away corkscrew divots of spongy, sickly white lumps of flesh.

Still holding Filo steady on the edge of the swamp Vaan waved off his men with his free hand (Filo just wasn't that heavy and he could hold her with one arm). Filo managed to tear herself free of the Banshee's arms and jumped to Vaan's side, pulling her short sword free of her sheath.

The Banshee rose fully from the water. It was a woman, or used to be. Long, thin trails of near colourless hair hung in mud slicked clumps from its water-logged bulbous head. The body of the woman had a broken neck and the gaping, slathering jaw of the Banshee gnashed together hungrily at an impossible angle because of that mortal injury.

The Banshee lunged; Vaan raised his arm almost indifferently and lopped off the creature's head in one wide-arc swing (Filo, standing a bit too close, had to duck to avoid catching the tail end of that swing).

The Banshee's headless body fell back into the inky black, rainbow sheened, waters of the swamp and was instantly swallowed. The head bounced across the grassy solid ground of the Nabreus saturated soil for a few feet and came to rest at the foot of one of the gnarled, fibrous trees lining the paths of the Deadlands.

Vaan wiped the sword off on his trouser leg, managing to avoid slicing the treated loose leather on the ridiculously sharp edges of the sword, and then sheathed the weapon with casual efficiency.

He turned back to his men with his usual half smile, 'Be careful the rest of you, and stay away from the waters edge, alright?'

Vaan didn't wait for his staring compatriots to react and instead ambled onwards towards the encroaching tragic shadow the Necrohol of Nabudis. He started whistling between his teeth as a mildly shaken Filo reiterated Vaan's instructions.

'Sorry Vaan, that was so stupid of me, I should have never turned my back on danger like that,' Filo sighed as she caught up with him and fell in step, 'and in front of the men as well, I feel so stupid.'

Vaan shrugged again, 'Hey there is nothing wrong with being stupid. Anyway it was an accident. People make mistakes Fi. That's why we're here.'

Filo glanced at him though she was devoting most of her attention to scanning the environment for giant ghost toads, more Banshees and even aggressive, hostile Baknamy; though interestingly the Baknamy were keeping a very low profile.

'Vaan, explain, I'm your Sergeant, I need to know what's going on.'

'You do. We're going to talk to the Baknamy.'

'But they attacked our home Vaan. They might have captured Ashe.'

Filo's voice, high and girlish, fluted upwards in the decibel spectrum as she struggled to comprehend the laid-back inscrutable expression on Vaan's face. She failed.

'It wasn't the Baknamy. They're just the scapegoat.'

It was not Filo's fault that she could not understand Vaan, and in truth she understood more about him than most, aided and abetted by her almost naïve love for the older man. Still, Filo simply did not possess the right frame of mind to truly understand Vaan.

To understand the inner workings of Vaan's mind, to understand why at seventeen he had wanted to own the skies and at twenty six he was happy to be viewed even by his subordinates as a vacant eyed, efficient soldier and slightly odd half-wit, it was necessary to understand one basic fact; a fact that Filo did not possess.

In all Ivalice there was no one single way to fly an airship.

Not many people knew that and even fewer really understood the significance of this one fact.

Vaan himself had been seventeen and in awe of a sardonic, ridiculously jaded sky pirate, a passenger and an eager (but sometimes not overly effective) participant in events far too important to make sense to him, when he had been recipient of that one piece of received wisdom.

Ironically it was about the only thing Balthier had said to him during the whole quest that Vaan had properly understood, and it had proved to be the definitive cornerstone of Vaan's whole life philosophy.

There was no one, single, right way to _Fly._

The first time Balthier had let Vaan loose at the controls of the Strahl that was all the older man would say in instruction.

_You want to fly, Vaan, then get on and do it. _

As it happened, Vaan, not one to shy away from a challenge, had managed to blow out the secondary and tertiary steering couplings and blow the fuses on the quadratic power convertor within twenty minutes of erratic, bouncing, juddering flight over the Cerobi Steppes.

As he recalled Penelo (trainee navigator) had been reduced to physical sickness and in the end, Fran, still pale and lethargic from the Mist poisoning she had received in the Pharos, had had to raise her voice at Balthier to get him to take back control of the Strahl before Vaan killed them all.

To this day Vaan wasn't sure that Balthier would not have simply let Vaan crash the ship had Fran not intervened; in a strange way Vaan even understood the sentiment.

Balthier never said one word against him for damaging the Strahl, though he berated him regularly for any number of other things which weren't Vaan's fault.

In fact, Balthier had never actually taught him to fly an airship in so many words. It was Fran who showed him how the engines worked, and where the basic components of an airship should be, and how to know when they weren't working. Balthier, in contrast, simply handed over the controls of his beloved Strahl to Vaan, sat back in the navigator's seat, and told him to get on with it.

Vaan had never learned so much from so little.

Thus Vaan had learned to fly on his own, in his own way. He learned his own style and gained his own competence in how to service an airship that was unique to him.

Eventually Vaan learned to _Fly_ (and to live) with a simple, uncomplicated, straightforward surety. He flew fast, but steady, aggressively but never needlessly so, he was competent and reliable, and every now and again he could fly better than anyone else in the sky, gifted with moments of sublime inspiration.

That was why Vaan saw more clearly than most of the people he admired the most; because he never expected life to make sense. In Vaan's opinion facts just confused things and people who thought they knew all the facts didn't know anything at all.

'_Vaan!'_

This time Filo slapped him over the head to get his attention. Vaan raised aggrieved eyes to her and rubbed at the back of his head, 'What was that for?'

Filo glared at him green eyes bright as Mist fires, 'I've been talking to you for the last ten minutes. You weren't listening to a word I said were you?'

Vaan winced apologetically, 'Sorry, Fi.'

Filo rolled her eyes and muttered something disparaging about his attention span being connected in some way with constipated Chocobos, under her breath, 'You were saying something about the Baknamy being scapegoats?' she prompted irritably.

'Huh? Oh, yeah. That's because they are, scapegoats I mean.' he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. It felt like something, an insect of some sort, had bitten him on the nape of the neck and it was sore. Vaguely he wondered if Filo had any ointment? Penelo would have done; Penelo almost invariable carried a vast cornucopia of unnecessary things on her person.

'_Vaan,' _exasperation poured forth from Filo as she clenched her teeth and hissed his name. He realised that he'd thought himself away from the here and now again and dragged himself back.

He shrugged; sometimes he really wished things weren't always so complicated, 'Baknamy don't attack cities Filo. They don't like Humes, but then we've never been exactly nice to them, but they still don't attack us in our own cities. Even when they attacked the palace it didn't make sense. There are more of us, we're bigger than they are, stronger, and we have better weapons. So why'd they do it, huh?'

Filo frowned thoughtfully, chewing on her bottom lip as she thought on this, 'I dunno. Maybe….well…..' her frown deepened, 'they said that Ashe had been killing them. But I don't believe that.'

Vaan stopped to kick a warped fallen log out of their path, scuffing his metal booted feet in a clump of sinuous, vibrant purple flowers growing in dense patches all across the undulating, treacherous ground they walked. The stalks of dark green grass and pungent herbs brushed their shins as they walked.

'Yeah, but think about it Filo, if it were you, and your friends and family were being killed and someone told you it was some Hume queen's fault, wouldn't you want to hurt her back?'

Vaan looked about at the environment he now traversed.

His gaze took in the heavy veil of Mist that was not so different from the one that shrouded the Feywood and the tall trees that had sprung up at ridiculous speed in the last eleven years since the bomb hit and transformed the Nabradia environment completely.

The trees were powerful and oddly sinister in appearance but undoubtedly alive. Vaan breathed in deep the aroma of the sickly sweet and venomously brightly coloured flowers spreading over the partially dried out meadow they now walked through.

In the nine years since he had first stumbled into Nabradia after taking a wrong turn out of the Salikawood during his quest with Ashe, Nabudis had changed. It had grown, just like Dalmasca had.

For a place people called the Deadlands the Nabreus Plains were surprisingly full of living, growing things Vaan mused with a certain understated irony.

'But Vaan we know Ashe didn't do anything to the Baknamy, and she didn't order anything done either.' Filo broke into his thoughts and forced him to try and remember what they had been talking about in the first place.

Vaan stopped walking and lifted his head to look up at the heavily clouded sky just once more. Mist vapour passed before his eyes like a lacquer of pearlescent brightness. He watched illusionary visions pass through the sheen of lights.

'Yes she did. She attacked the Baknamy when she told those scientists they could try and bring back something that doesn't exist anymore. She didn't know she was doing it, but she didn't really care enough to think about it either.'

Once upon a time Vaan had seen a ghost meant for a Princess' eyes. He had seen that ghost draw a Princess towards a fate not her own choosing and for a brief time he had even believed that that ghost was his own brother.

Vaan did not like illusions; not because they were false but because people tried to make them real.

Reks was dead. He'd been dead a long time and would stay dead for even longer, far longer than he'd ever been alive. Rasler, the ghost, was dead too and so was his kingdom……but at the same time it wasn't.

That was the point; that was the thing Vaan could see but Ashe could not.

The Nabudis that would have become Ashe's kingdom with Rasler was gone. It was dead and never coming back, because you can't bring back the dead, but Nabudis, the place Vaan and Filo and the soldiers walked through now, that was still here.

A different Nabudis and maybe not the one everyone would like to see, but the one they had all the same, and that Nabudis was very, very alive.

It was alive and it was the Baknamy's home.

'Fi, Ashe wants Nabudis back the way it was,' Vaan said reaching down to pluck one of the purple flowers up, and, on impulse, tucking the fleshy flower behind her ear.

Filo flushed slightly and bit her lip on a happy smile before she immediately pulled the flower from her hair in case any of 'the men' could see her with something as feminine as a flower.

Filo was determined to be seen as a soldier as 'good' as any of the men. That she could still do that with a flower in her hair seemed to have escaped her notice.

Vaan noted however that she did tuck the flower into the top of her breastplate.

'Well what's wrong with that?'

Filo demanded when Vaan started forward again. He could see the faint lights of the Baknamy cooking fires atop a distant hill; the crest of Nabudis fortress' fallen towers just poking above the horizon.

Vaan sighed; sometimes he wondered why it was that people called _him_ an idiot, when they couldn't even see what was right in front of them.

'Fi, don't you sometimes wish your parents were still alive and that the war never happened?'

She stopped dead and stared at him. At nineteen, the scars the war had left on her were still raw. She had lost her family very young and found herself cut adrift without a safety net at a time when security and comfort should have been her right.

'Of course,' she whispered, 'don't ask stupid questions, Vaan.'

Vaan wasn't really listening. For once he wanted to explain a few things to the people all around him who still didn't understand how life worked, 'But you can't have your family back, Fi, and even if you could bring them back you'd never get back what losing them in the first place took from you, right?'

'N-no, I guess not,' Filo's green eyes narrowed in thought, 'I can't even imagine the sort of person I'd be if the war and losing my parents never happened,' she admitted softly.

'Right,' Vaan nodded, 'and just because Ashe is a queen, and she thinks she's doing something for the right reason, that doesn't mean she can bend those rules anymore than me and you.'

Filo nodded her head slowly, 'You're saying that Ashe shouldn't try and save Nabudis, because no one can change what happened, right?'

Vaan nodded, 'Yeah that, but also, it's not hers anymore, Filo. Nabudis doesn't belong to Dalmasca or Ashe anymore. It belongs to the Baknamy. It's theirs now.'

'Vaan?'

Filo did not know what shocked her more, that Vaan could so easily tell her that the Baknamy, creatures that no Hume would ever give anything too, now owned Nabradia simply because they had settled there, or the fact that he sounded like he really, really, meant it.

There was usually trouble when Vaan _really _meant something.

'Yeah, so, that's what the weapons are for. We owe the Baknamy and we're going to help them re-take Nabudis once and for all,' Vaan grinned, 'Or if that doesn't work, Balthier gave me something that can blow what's left of Nabudis Fortress sky high.'

Vaan turned back to a scandalised Filo and rubbed the back of his with habitual nonchalance as his words drifted on the humid air of the swamp, 'So either way, we're going to settle the Nabudis issue once and for all.'


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter Nineteen: Facets out of time; loose threads and tattered ends**

_A/N: Hello all; I am playing with narrative again! This chapter might seem disjointed and unconnected to the plot, but each facet is important…..almost like clues to how this story will end as well as throwing in some left-field plot twists! ;)_

_P.S: double update, don't miss the preceding chapter!_

* * *

Twenty four years in the past

A man leads his seven year old son by the hand through the crowded avenues of Highgarden Terrace towards the lights and hub-bub of the Grand Arcade. Looking down on his son covertly the man notices that the child is clutching his hand very tightly as he looks all about him with a keen, almost suspiciously intent regard.

Yet when the vanguard shrieks and twisting spirals of golden light scream through the sky, the very first tirade of the scheduled fireworks display, his little boy jolts in alarm and presses closer to the man's leg.

The man chuckles and lightly rests his hand in benign benediction upon his son's chocolate brown hair. His son self-consciously pulls away from him and immediately smoothes his hair where his father has mussed it.

The man and his boy continue along the tree lined avenue as above their heads the Archades skyline is torn asunder with noise and bright lights. A palpable aura of excitement, a frisson of pure energy not often experienced in the elite aerie of Gentry populated Grand Arcade, permeates the air.

The man glances down on his son curiously, interested to see how his somewhat introverted child will react to these new sights and sounds; his boy was not born the last time the Empire celebrated a milestone event such as Emperor Gramis' fortieth year as head of state.

The man is quietly delighted to see that his boy's eyes are brilliantly lit with the striating lights and flashes of the high altitude explosions he watches with that same, silent, but focused concentration. The man suspects that the child does not even realise that a large and contented grin adorns his features.

The man is smiling too; but he knew it. He is well pleased that his boy is not afraid of the hustle and bustle and the fireworks. It would not do at all for the fruit of his loins (the only one who survived; he still misses the sons that came and went so swiftly before this one) should prove to be too timid and retiring.

His boy becomes aware of his father's eyes on him and looks up to meet his gaze, warm sorrel brown eyes meet much younger eyes, dark than his father's (his mother's eyes) and possessed of their own, separate, spirit. The man smiles at his son and receives, paradoxically, an oddly sombre look in return.

Sometimes the man worries that his son is too serious; he is a quiet child, though not shy as such. It worries the man that his boy has no playmates his own age and instead infinitely prefers the company of adults, the researchers and fellow scientists that flock about the man like vultures all day long.

That is not the company he would have his son keep, but still these are concerns for another day.

Tonight is a night of celebration. He and his boy are honoured and privileged that they are both children of the greatest Empire ever to grace the face of Ivalice; a vast congregation of people who live by the law of man and follow the path of science and progress. The man has no doubt that Archadia is the way and the will that all Ivalice will one day bow down too.

The man likes to think that he will play a part in seeing his Empire fulfils her destiny. He also likes to think that his son will be there too.

The man is broken from his reverie as his boy tugs upon his arm; something has caught the child's quicksilver attention. The man is just slightly disconcerted when his young son pulls free of his guiding hand and runs off along his own course.

The man follows him, keeping a keen eye on his child's progress through the murmurs and players, the minstrels and dancing behemoths, chained and tamed for the Gentry's amusement, that fill the Grand Arcade.

The man soon discovers what his keen eyed son has espied even from the other side of the packed central precinct. A street-seller has set up a makeshift stall selling a collection of brightly coloured mechanical toys.

As the man passes the Caduceus fountain carved into the twin serpents of House Solidor he see's that some clever knave has found means to dye the waters black and red as it spouts from the serpents mouths.

It looks like streams of fresh blood and shadow and the man is momentarily accosted and disconcerted by the tasteless sight.

The man shakes himself of such morbid reflections however and does not let himself be concerned as he realises that it is not a patriotic act but one of protest. The crest of arms of the Republic of Landis, with whom the Empire is at war, has been brutally gouged into the stone of the fountains base. A flagrant message of arrogant defiance has been scrawled alongside.

_One day the Empire will bleed herself dry; one day when she has no innocent blood to spill she will slit the throats of her young and Archades will die._

The man curls his lip disdainfully; there are always misguided fools who fear the decisive forward momentum of progress. No matter, they will all bow down to the inevitable eventually.

The man walks over to his son, who is exclaiming delightedly over a wind-up mechanical airship painted in cheerful shades of blue and pink and yellow.

The man is not sure, airships are not his passion, but he thinks the toy is a replica of an S-Class Strahl.

When the man reaches his son his boy immediately begins babbling in excitement over the toy and the man must concede it is very well made. Still when he inquires after the price from the sharp-eyed vendor he soon insists his boy put the toy back. It is not worth the Gil for a passing fancy he states firmly over his child's plaintive cries and the vendors desperate attempts to bargain.

The man is adamant however; he has a lot of Gil, he is scion to an ancient Family of the Empire but he has not been raised to fritter Gil away on trifles. His son has many toys; he does not need another.

The man is annoyed, nay, angry, when his boy begins to snivel, bottom lip trembling and dark eyes blazing with disappointed anger.

He scolds the child for his histrionics, though in fact his boy is hardly hysterical. He is barely even crying. Still his boy sulks, quiet and unresponsive, for the rest of the evening and the man is quite put out.

When they return to their home in Grovesnor Square Highgarden Terrace the man asks his man-servant Jim to fetch the light cane. His boy must learn that it is not fitting for a child of Empire to whimper and cry and sulk when he does not get what he wants.

The man does not enjoy punishing his son and so he gives him no more than three swift whacks across the back of the legs with the cane before sending him to bed. He notices the blazing dark defiance in his boys eyes (his mother's eyes, Ezria's stubborn, quiet temper). The man notes the anger in his son; he notes his boy's determination not to cry in front of him even though fat red welts have risen on his child's calves.

The man smiles as he tends to his many pet lizards, after the boy has gone to bed.

The man is not surprised two days later, in fact he is secretly delighted, when he comes across his boy playing in his room and finds him trying, unsuccessfully, to hide away the mechanical replica Strahl airship that the child has bought secretly with all his saved up pocket Gil.

The man is pleased; his boy has done exactly as he had hoped by defying him. Yes, the man is very pleased, though he shows it not and instead punishes the boy for his disobedience and secretiveness by confiscating the toy.

It takes his clever little boy three days to steal the toy back. The man is slightly disappointed, he had hoped he would be quicker, and so he brings out the cane again.

It is a careful enterprise to turn his boy into the man he wants him to be, one who will fight for what he wants and use any means to ensure his own will is done, and it is one that the man does not always enjoy. Still, this is his son and his life's work.

And one day his boy will inherit the world that the man will make for him; his boy will have to be ready for that burden.

* * *

Twelve years in the past

A young man slips into a small but warmly lit lodging room above the armourers in Balfonheim port. The man has a shock of flame red hair and almost virulently green eyes. Those eyes are bright and glassy with wine and smoking weed, his cheeks smeared with rouge from women's kisses and his blood is singing with the thrill and whirl of the highlife.

Still, stepping into the cramped attic room is like stepping into another world entirely.

Outside Balfonheim bay is roaring like a drunken dying beast, fireworks are careening wildly through the night sky and one hatched roof has already had to be hastily put out after a direct collision with one of the gun-powder comets, yet in here that world of colour and light might as well have not existed.

The bright eyed man grins to himself; only his too-serious friend could create a sphere of scholarly endeavour in the midst of all this debauched jollity.

'Bal--_their_.' He deliberately over-emphasises his friends name because it never fails to annoy his uptight companion. Said young man looks up briefly, brows already puckered in habitual scowl of concentration, before he returns to whatever he is doing when he should be drinking and carousing with Aeneas.

Aeneas is unperturbed when his friend does not even grant him the courtesy of a greeting; it is not rudeness so much as acute distraction. Balthier is up to something and Aeneas' curiosity is instantly piqued.

He ambles over to the small table littered with, of all things, a make shift lathe and metal press clamped to the side of the table, numerous pieces of dulled silver coin, bottles marked with the names of a number of highly dangerous alchemicals, and scraps of paper covered in Balthier's indecipherable scrawl and tiny thumbnail sketches.

Aeneas reaches to pick up one of the crumpled pieces of parchment paper and instantly, with the ridiculously fast reflexes that made Balthier such a lethal shot with a rifle, the other man grabs his wrist.

'Shouldn't you be otherwise engaged in debauchery at this time?'

Aeneas watches, very curious now, as Balthier tries to gather up the pieces of paper one handed before Aeneas can decipher just what they are.

'O-ho, so we're plotting something, are we?' Aeneas manages to snatch up one of the strangely irregular shaped coins from the table as Balthier is distracted with the papers.

'No,' Balthier snaps trying and failing to grab back the coin, '_we _are not doing anything. _I_ am plotting something, _you_ are merely inconveniencing me.'

Aeneas looks down on the coin; a careful hole drilled through the centre, and studies the exquisitely carved design upon its face. It seems to Aeneas that the picture has been carved first and the hole drilled later.

Studying the coin with a pirate's keen eye for forgery Aeneas deduces that the metal has been carefully stained, and the ware and tear upon its carefully tarnished surface has been artfully feigned, to give the impression that the coin is considerably older than it is.

''Quidion'? What is this Balthier, what are you up to now?' Aeneas chuckles lightly, 'What is a 'Quidion/Heart' when I find it in my palm, I ask you?'

Balthier sighs, settling back into his hard-backed chair and stretching out his long legs; with absent courtesy Aeneas is waved into the chair across the table as Balthier folds his ink and chemical stained hands across his vest.

'I don't suppose I can bribe you to forget you have seen all this, can I?' his friend asks with the sardonic edge of open defeat that denotes that he already knows the answer.

Aeneas laughs as he picks up on errant piece of paper and props his feet up on the table, 'Hardly; women are like fishes, there are always more in the sea, but if you are plotting something in that mad head of yours, Balthier, I want a piece of it.'

'It is hardly particularly interesting, you would be better off…'

But Aeneas is not listening as he has finally managed to interpret the ink smudged, squashed, and in some cases, ill-spelt scrawl that adorns the sheet of paper in his hands, 'The curse of the Quidion of Aspera?' Aeneas snorts a laugh, 'Are you planning to give up piracy for a vocation as a story-teller, Balthier?'

His compatriot shakes his head and reaches for the half empty bottle of wine on the table, which has presumably helped to fuel Balthier's evening of toil. Not bothering to stand on ceremony for Aeneas' benefit Balthier merely drinks straight from the bottle. Aeneas continues to read.

'Thirteen cursed Quidion coins, six with faces, seven without,' he reads aloud Balthier's notes, 'faced coins will need names, something suitably mythic, heart and mind perhaps, but what else?' Aeneas looks up at Balthier who is watching him with closed expression; his friend merely shrugs and gestures with the bottle for him to read on.

Aeneas, highly curious now, obliges, 'The Quidion will be cursed, know a man in need of Gil with a gift for simpatico neuromancy who will set the spells for the right price…spells? Balthier I thought you loathed magick?'

'I do,' Balthier smirks faintly, 'that does not mean that I do not appreciate its power, or the usefulness of certain types of little known arcana.'

Aeneas shakes his head, 'Balthier what _is_ simpatico Neuromancy, and why are you trying to make cursed coins?'

For a moment he thinks all Balthier will do in answer is smirk at him inscrutably, but then the other young man's desire to bask in his own cleverness and hear the sound of his own voice wins out, 'Essentially it is the art of curses. As for why I am creating a pirate myth of cursed treasure, well, you should not need to ask, for when have pirates not sought illicit treasure, hmm?'

Aeneas sighs; he understood the appeal of dangerous spoils well enough he just does not know why, when treasure existed in abundance all over Ivalice, Balthier felt the need to forge some. Especially on a night like this when the drink was flowing free and the women were bountiful and eager.

'Balthier, it is the reason why you are making these Quidion things in the first place that I fail to comprehend. What do we need neuromancy cursed pieces of silver for?'

'We don't,' Balthier pointed out with deathly patience that was in fact anything but, 'however no sky pirate has ever stopped in the pilfering of loot because it suddenly occurred to him that he does not need it. It is a matter of want; therein lies the power of these coins.'

Balthier flicked a hand idly as he leaned back in his chair and watched Aeneas with steady dark eyes, 'a rumour carefully placed here and there of a cache of cursed silver coin, powerful enough to grant the owner all manner of weird and wonderful boons, and all pirates will flock to the source.'

Aeneas supposed this was true, even he was looking at the coins with something like desire and he knew they were false, 'So, this will be of benefit to us how precisely?'

Balthier smiled with the self-contented smirk of a bandercouerl with a full belly, 'I dare say it will be of little benefit to you, Aeneas, but to myself, well, imagine,' Balthier sat forward and leaned across the table, 'these coins will be the most sought after treasure in pirate lore, and I am the only man who knows how they work. Now do you see what it is I do here?'

Aeneas could only stare at Balthier for a moment in a mixture of shock and admiration, then he started to laugh broadly, 'Gods damn, man, I would never have thought of such a scheme. With these coins under your belt you'll be free of Remus and the pirate king in no time.'

Balthier's smirk grew wider even as his eyes hardened behind his perpetual mask, 'Oh, my ambitions are considerably more far reaching than that; you see with these coins, I will _control_ any pirate who dares use the Quidion, either against me or otherwise.'

Aeneas let his feet drop from the table in shock, 'But that would mean…?'

Balthier eased back into his chair once more, smirk still adorning his sharp features, 'Hmm, yes, precisely. You might be content to wallow in the moment, Aeneas, but I look to the future. It is my ambition to be the greatest sky pirate that ever lived; these coins are the currency I will use to ease my passage.'

Aeneas swallows dryly as he blindly reaches for the half finished bottle of wine Balthier had returned to the table; he took a healthy pull from the neck, 'I would ask you where you learned to be so calculating but I think it would be a waste of breath.'

Balthier's smile faded as he nods darkly, 'It probably would be,' he conceded quietly.

Aeneas chuckles faintly and raised the bottle in a toast, 'Here's to Dr Cid and his son; a worthy successor to his twisted genius.'

Interestingly enough, Balthier does not join in with the toast and instead he averted his gaze turning back to his schemes, one of the false Quidion coins flashing dully between his fingers under the warm crystal lamplight.

* * *

Eleven and a half years in the past

He watched the pieces of parchment burn; crackling and crumbling to dust under the careful golden flames licking at the careful lines and curls of ink that marked an entire research team's years of toil and endeavour.

Aeneas knew his time was up; watching the blueprints Mayhew had smuggled to him burn in the fireplace of the tiny, cramped and draughty inn room he was hiding in.

He lifted his gaze from the flames and sighed. It was to be a sad and tragic end for the sky pirate Aeneas, after all.

He had hoped to die in his sleep, old and fat amid a bed filled with the treasures pilfered in a lifetime of joyous excess. Or at the very least he had hoped to die aboard his ship, the Phoenix, going down in a blaze of glory only for his legend to rise from the ashes and reign for eternity.

That did not look very likely to happen now; but then, what could be done?

His younger brother had sought him out, despite the oft-vocalised distain he held for Aeneas' chosen profession. Mayhew had almost begged him to sell these self same scraps of blue print, now turned to ash in his grate, to Rozzaria so that whatever it was Draklor was making would never come to pass.

Still Aeneas knew that even had he succeeded in finding a buyer among the leery Rozzarian rogue arms dealers he knew of, that sale would have been his death knell.

He had broken the cardinal rule of piracy; but what choice did he have?

Aeneas had not cared enough to find out what the blueprints were of, or why Mayhew was prepared to commit treason to see the project he had worked on for almost two years collapse. It did not matter; all that mattered was that, when all was said and done, blood was thicker than water.

His baby brother had asked his aid and Aeneas would never do other than grant it any way he could.

So here he was awaiting the appearance of his executioners. He did not suppose he would have to wait long. Balthier and his new Viera partner would be here soon; of this Aeneas had no doubt.

In some ways this was fitting; he had not seen his friend since Remus had died and Balthier had begun to make his mark on Ivalice.

Almost involuntarily Aeneas looked down at the false Quidion coin clenched tightly in his sweating fist; it seemed likely that he would die, if not today than very soon.

The coin, that very coin Balthier had been working on that night six months ago when Aeneas had disturbed him, gleamed sickly in Aeneas' palm. The gift of this particular coin to Aeneas had been a knowing jest between them both; now that coin seemed to mock him.

Quidion of heart; loyalty had been his downfall. The bonds of fraternal love were to be the death of him.

Aeneas decided then and there that he would make sure that Balthier was the one to end him; he had to blame someone for all this and somewhere along the way Balthier seemed an apt choice.

And he would not tell Balthier either; he would not tell him that his father was up to some manner of ill, just as he had never told his friend that his own brother worked under the notoriously mad Draklor chief of staff.

Aeneas would not tell Balthier because he hoped that one day, at a time when Balthier thought he'd won, he would find out the truth and he would suffer for it all the more.

Aeneas, waiting to die for doing only what a brother must, hoped that when Balthier discovered the truth it would break him as Aeneas was broken now.

Quidion of heart; the coins were cursed and the man who controlled the coins would be cursed for all eternity with the knowledge of what he had done.

This was Aeneas' vengeance and he would die to see it fulfilled.

* * *

Nine years in the past

As six years tireless toil and hard work bore final fruit, the man staggers back against the backdrop of a supernova pinnacle of purest deifected nethicite, secure in the knowledge that all had come to pass as he had desired.

Satisfied in a way that few men could ever hope to be and knowing that he had achieved all he had ever sought to do while leaving his own, indelible mark, upon a new era of hume progress and endeavour he had helped to shape, there was no purpose in the man lingering long in the ashes of his triumph.

He said goodbye to his six years companion, his muse and his confidante, and his heart was filled only with gratitude that he had been so blessed to be so trusted with such a grave and noble cause.

'Ah Venat, I have so enjoyed these last six years,'

_The pleasure was all mine, _his friend replies, understanding him still in his moment of supreme victory.

And the man smiles, staggering to his feet as a strange weightlessness afflicts his limbs. The tell-tale toll of the years that had given him such aches and pains of late fall from his shoulders as he stands tall and proud in his triumph.

Before his eyes, as vision fades and the canvas of Ivalice falls by the wayside, his boy steps before him and his eyes are angry, so very defiantly angry (his mother's eyes).

The man smiles still; all has fallen out exactly as he willed it so; yes, indeed, he is so very pleased.

His son speaks, and though the man no longer has the means to hear him (and perhaps he never truly heard the words his boy said, too busy planning what he would prefer the boy say instead) he knows that the boy wants answers. He wants reasons; he wishes resolutions and forgiveness, as all the man's plans come to fruition.

The man simply smiles and refuses to bestow on the boy the lies the child thinks he wants or the censure he expects. Instead he simply bids the boy leave as he fades into the brilliant light of his own endeavours.

History in the hands of man.

The man now stands on the shoulders of the would-be gods, and in the moment before he is gone he looks upon his life's work and he smiles.

His life's work…….

…….and the man had named him Ffamran.

* * *

_A/N: special mention and thanks to looking.for.lola, her (very good) story inspired a certain turn of phrase in this chapter and she too shares my love of Cid (yay Cid)_


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter Twenty: How to make friends and influence people **

_A/N: Woot, woot….another double update for you all! Thank you everyone who wrote so kindly about 'my' Vaan….here is an encore performance for you ;)_

* * *

'Vaan!'

The Baknamy ridden Leynir circled closer to the cart and the gaggle of Dalmascan Knights were being pressed closer and closer to the cart's wheels. The Chocobos, well aware of potential imminent death, stamped their feet, lowered their heads and scratched at the boggy ground, the fan of feathers around their necks fluffed anxiously.

'Vaaaaaaan!'

The Baknamy on foot formed organised ranks behind their mounted comrades, three deep, with the first row on their knees with rifles cocked, the second holding shields ready to use them to cover themselves and the rifle-bearers after the first shot had been fired. The final row stood a little way back armed with basic magicks and bows.

The circling Leynir's paced around the cart with two, and sometimes three, sword bearing Baknamy upon their backs. The mutated former Nabradian warhorses, metallic scales shining in the thin, distorted sunlight and their spiked manes coated with poison by the ingenious Baknamy, pawed the ground and snorted the air aggressively.

There had to be at least fifty Baknamy to the twenty Humes; the Dalmascan's were disadvantaged in terms of numbers, arms, and knowledge of the terrain. For all appearances it seemed like a hopeless situation.

Therefore it seemed improbable that there would be any reason at all that Vaan should find to be _grinning _at the present time.

Yet he did and he was, smiling from ear to ear, seemingly delighted with developments.

Vaan stepped forward, leaving the illusionary safety of the cart and the thicket of cover the rest of the soldiers provided, he raised his arms above his head and addressed the lead Leynir riding Baknamy, a creature with blue-green mottled skin, a vaguely amphibious appearance, and keen eyes.

'I am Captain Vaan of Dalmasca; I am charged with returning to the Baknamy of Nabradia something that belongs to them.' he shouted in a clear, amazingly authoritative tone of voice.

The Baknamy did not respond, but then neither did they open fire with a barrage of spells and lethal shot either; Vaan decided this was a good sign. Carefully with one hand he gestured for one of his men to unload the 'special cargo' from the back of the cart.

Instantly, as one of the soldiers moved to obey, the Baknamy shifted, rifle triggers being drawn back with audible cracks, the hissing, ionised scent of magick permeating the Mist thick air.

'Whoa, there,' Vaan returned his hands above his head and looked to his side and jerked his head backwards to address his soldiers without breaking his gaze from the Baknamy on the Leynir before him, 'Alright everyone, let's everyone put our hands on our heads so the Baknamy here no we mean no harm.'

'Vaan?'

Filo moved toward him almost involuntarily, Vaan twitched as faster than light the tip of a Baknamy blade and the sharp point of the Leynir's barbed horn pointed at his neck. Vaan swallowed carefully, 'Fi, can you not move anymore? You're kind of ruining things. I'm trying to negotiate with the Baknamy.'

There was a split second when, with his head forced back by the twin points of painful potential death, Vaan could see very little except the pearlescent, murky Mist thick sky, but he could hear Filo's shaking breath and he could almost feel the tension reverberating through the air in this fraught stand-off.

'No negotiate; Dalmasca kill Baknamy. We kill you.'

For the first time the blue-green Baknamy spoke, words oddly muted and controlled even over the distortion of the breathing apparatus he wore. Vaan thought he detected neither furious hatred nor ignorant aggression in the other's voice (the sort of things people always thought in association to the Baknamy) but, instead, a sort of tired resignation.

It was food for thought; if the Baknamy really wanted to kill him and the rest of his soldiers, they'd already be dead.

'Velan, let them out; now.'

Vaan braced himself for the sudden sharp pain, the immediate but thankfully short-lived agony of having his throat pierced, as behind him he heard the ripping sound of the cart's covering canvas being swiftly, jerkily, withdrawn.

Vaan closed his eyes in the those frantic, breakneck seconds that skidded by between the time it took for the Baknamy to react to movement on the Dalmascan side and the moment that he would die, drowned in his own blood.

The moment came and went and Vaan noticed that he was not dead. He opened his eyes.

The Baknamy holding him at knife point was not looking at him instead he was staring at the collection of Baknamy prisoners, captured after the raid on the palace, that were being herded from the cart by Velan.

Vaan shifted deliberately, fractionally, against the twin points of the Leynir's horn and the Baknamy's sword (vaguely Vaan wondered how the Baknamy was managing to control the Leynir so completely, holding the Mist maligned beast as beautifully in check as the Nabradian cavalrymen once did during parade), 'Like I said; Dalmasca returns to the Baknamy of Nabradia that which belongs to them, unharmed and without reprisal.'

As the prisoner Baknamy, who Vaan had personally ensured received all the rights and courtesy that a Hume prisoner would receive (and none of the censure), hovered uncertainly between the gaggle of Humes and their own people, Vaan met the striated, golden-grey eyes of the mounted Baknamy calmly.

The Baknamy blinked one eye and then the other, 'You call us Baknamy of Nabradia?'

Vaan would have shrugged and given the Baknamy a smile if it wasn't for the blades at his throat, 'I don't know what else to call you. I'm right though, you are the Baknamy living in Nabradia?'

The point of the blade against his throat quivered, the first signs of either fatigue or doubt showing in the Baknamy before him. The Baknamy and Vaan continued to simply stare at one another unblinking as above their heads the roiling Mist clouds ripped open and a silent, drenching rain began to pour down on them.

'Hume would acknowledge lives of Baknamy here?'

Steam rose from the flanks of the Leynir, drawn up by the riders and quivering with the murderous need to stomp and gouge with their spines hemmed in by bridle and bit and the pure and complete command of their Baknamy riders (they weren't as good as the legendary Nabradia horsemen, Vaan amended, the Baknamy were infinitely better).

The rain pelted the ground around them and pitter-pattered off the waxed canvas cover of the cart loudly in the fraught silence. A flash of lightening danced across the sky casting all in black and white relief.

Never once did Vaan or the Baknamy so much as blink; never once did they break their silent, formless communion.

'Hume would return Baknamy prisoners? Never; this is trap, more Hume treachery.'

'Baknamy would speak with Hume and not ambush us for our Gil? Baknamy tame the beasts of the Deadland?' Vaan questioned in the same manner as the Baknamy before him, 'Never……until now.'

Again the Baknamy blinked; rain ran in fast flowing rivulets down the flank and forelock of the Baknamy's Leynir. Rain also plastered Vaan's pale hair to his head until it looked colourless as the Mist laden sky. He blinked water from his eyes just once, an accidental mimicry of the Baknamy's gesture.

'Name Hume, by what are you called?'

'Vaan, like I said. Everyone calls me Vaan; just Vaan.'

The Baknamy was silent for a moment and then flicked his gaze to the gaggle of freed Baknamy half way between the two camps, with a quick jerk of his head the Baknamy ordered the freed Baknamy into the ranks.

'Stand back Hume-Vaan.' The mounted Baknamy commanded and Vaan gratefully withdrew out of reach of the blades, standing back against the cart. Filo, soaked and bedraggled under the rain, which dragged down their sodden clothing in the cloying, clinging humidity, shifted minutely closer to him.

'Captain?'

Velan, another Dalmascan blonde, and a private that Vaan had high hopes of, gave him a quizzical look as the freed Baknamy conferred with the mounted Baknamy leader. Vaan waved a hand to silence Velan as he carefully reached underneath the cart while trying to remain nonchalant.

This was just like flying when the first and auxiliary inertia dampeners had just blown out, Vaan mused excitedly, any minute you could find yourself upside down and headed for the ground in a hurry. Still, it was exhilarating right up to the point of impact.

Reaching with wet fingers for the true tie-breaker he had secured to the bottom of the cart right by the front right-hand wheel, Vaan kept the same faint, vaguely inane grin on his face as his fingers began tugging the cloth wrapped object free.

Abruptly the armed Baknamy spun on him, 'What in the cart Hume-Vaan and say you not that it be nothing for Baknamy tell me different.' as if to emphasise his anger the Leynir snorted hotly and began pawing the ground, its previous stillness shattered in a display of deliberate hostility.

Vaan's grin grew in size and depth lazily, almost vacuously, as he finally pulled free the six inch long shard that could make or break this entire negotiation, 'Weapons,' he replied easily, 'We're on our way to siege the Fortress of Nabudis.'

All around the pinned down cart Baknamy shifted in alarm, and once more triggers were cocked and spells kindled. It was the lead Baknamy that waved his people into stillness, with the rain dripping point of his sword, once more.

Vaan took the opportunity to sweep his rain-logged fringe from his face as the tension dropped from agonising to merely incredibly uncomfortable.

'You bring weapon but not use them; you bring Baknamy back unharmed and say Nabradia Baknamy land. What purpose bring you here Hume-Vaan?'

Vaan shrugged, 'The Humes who hurt Baknamy have hurt Dalmasca. We come to take back our Queen. If Baknamy want to help that would be good. If Baknamy don't want to help, that could be a problem.'

Casually Vaan pulled the shard from behind his back and carefully peeled back the cloth covering it; immediately a patina of rain coated the orange jagged shard in his hands. Within the glass like consistency of the shard dragon's blood red, royal purple and glacial blues and greens flashed in its amber depths.

Where the high-Mist content air reacted with the shard in Vaan's idle grip a faint humming sound rose into the air, like the high melody a tuning fork makes when struck, or the sound of a thumb across the rim of a crystal glass.

All eyes, Baknamy and Hume, fixed on the strange six inch sliver of crystal half wrapped in dull blue cloth (cut from an old shirt – Vaan had been in a hurry). Vaan smiled slightly as he slowly raised the shard for all to see.

'Know what this is?'

As one, the ranks of Baknamy seemed to quiver, and eyes turned to their leader openly anxious. The mounted Baknamy had to take a moment to rein in his mount as the Leynir reacted to the presence of the shard; the beasts of Nabradia, at least, knew what it was, Vaan held in his hands.

'This is a piece of pure Deifected Nethicite; a piece of the Sun-Cryst as was.'

Vaan announced and heard the stifled gasp of shock from Filo and the soft murmured curses from one or two of the soldiers behind his back. None of them made a move to ruin all Vaan was trying to do; if nothing else he had at least earned the benefit of the doubt.

The mounted Baknamy stared him down; 'Baknamy care not for Hume shiny trinket. Baknamy not fall for Hume trickery.'

Vaan feigned an expression of innocent confusion; it was easy enough for Vaan to do, 'Huh?'

He shook his head and shuffled his feet as he almost dropped the arm that held the Nethicite shard Balthier had given him before heading for the Pharos, 'I guess Baknamy are more stupid than a Chocobo after all. Even your mounts know what this is, but the Baknamy don't?'

Though it was hard to read Baknamy faces, on account of the fact that their faces were not very Hume-like and mostly covered by their breathing masks, still Vaan thought his comment had hit a nerve.

'Baknamy no stupider than Humes who use the Mist Shard to destroy home; Baknamy know better. Baknamy make good what Humes bespoil.' Vaan's Baknamy counterpart snapped angrily.

A tremendous crack of thunder drowned out Vaan's initial response and the sky was once again strobed with brilliant, bleaching white light. The after impressions of the sheet lightening blanketing the sky left dancing flares of colour pin-wheeling across Vaan's retina. He decided to speed things up a bit.

'I'm here to make a deal with the leader of the Nabradia Baknamy; is he here?'

The mounted Baknamy cocked his head to the side, 'You want talk Baknamy you talk to Eats Fast and Kills Faster.'

The Baknamy let go of the reins of his Leynir to slap a small hand against his chest.

'Huh? What's that?' Vaan asked stupidly.

The Baknamy narrowed his reptilian eyes at him, 'Eats Fast and Kills Faster is my calling, stupid Hume-Vaan. Baknamy no bargain with tricksy Humes; we know your ways. You kill Baknamy and take back Baknamy soil. Soil that Baknamy claim when Humes so careless as to ruin land and kill selves.'

Vaan rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and shuffled his feet in the already over saturated mud, 'Huh? Is that what we're planning?'

Vaan lifted his head and grinned through a face full of rain, 'Well in that case I'd better just set this shard off now and be done with it, huh?'

Another crash of lightening rendered the sky in harsh shades of black and white, thunder rattled through the water logged plains as the heavy, humid air was perforated a million times over by each tumultuous, fat, raindrop that pulverised the muddy slurry at their feet.

Vaan lifted the shard above his head as another arc of lightening and another bone shaking crash of thunder, like the roars of the gods of war, created the perfect backdrop to this artful bluff.

Held aloft the shard caught the light from the torn sky and reflected it into the eyes of the Baknamy in prismatic spears of iridescence.

'The way I see it Baknamy have no reason to trust Humes and Humes have no reason to trust Baknamy. The Nabradia Baknamy _did_ attack our Queen.' Vaan spoke over the dying grumbles of the storm.

'Still I don't believe you took Ashe. I think the men who killed your people made it look like Baknamy stole our Queen. I think they want us to kill each other so that neither Baknamy nor Dalmasca can have Nabradia.'

The Baknamy struggled to steady his mount, 'Humes tell clever lies; Hume-Vaan say he bring back Baknamy but bring Mist Shard as weapon. Hume-Vaan say he not blame Baknamy for Hume-Queen missing but he threaten Baknamy. Hume-Vaan use words to trick Baknamy. Hume-Vaan dangerous clever.'

Quite abruptly Vaan grinned; finally, he had found another living being who seemed to understand him, that it was a Baknamy did not detract from the simple pleasure of being recognised in the least. Still he could not allow the moment to slip by him.

'No, I'm just not stupid. Hume and Baknamy can't be friends just because we have the same enemy. We've hated each for years, that doesn't just go away when it's convenient. But we can work together to get rid of our enemy. We can do that and sort the rest out later; that's what I'm offering.'

A loud muttering rose from all the serried rows of Baknamy, 'Lies, lies; Hume treachery,'

Still, Eats Fast and Kills Faster watched him carefully, 'Humes of Science kill my brother, he just youngling. Humes of Science poison Baknamy; they catch with Mist and watch us die. Humes of Science carry crest of Dalmasca Queen.'

Vaan nodded, 'And Baknamy were caught in the Palace with Hume blood on their blades; a message in blood was written on the walls of the Queen's chambers: _Queen kill Baknamy, Baknamy kill Queen. _Doesn't mean Baknamy did it and, I mean when you think about it, anyone can wear a crest, right?'

Casually Vaan began to juggle the Shard from one hand to the other, seemingly completely unconcerned that he passed between his hands enough raw power to annihilate a sizable portion of the Nabradia Deadlands, not to mention blow himself, the Baknamy, Filo and the rest of the Soldiers to smithereens.

'See the way I figure it,' Vaan continued easily, 'is that all that really matters right now is that I have this shard of Deifected Nethicite and you have fifty Baknamy with spells and guns pointed at me and my people….so….'

Vaan lifted one leg so he could pass the shard under his leg as he added a level of his complexity to his juggling routine. The storm had finally passed over and the humidity in the air only increased with the remnant of moisture from the rain.

The heavy, clogged white sky sealed itself over as the last of the thunder died away, 'The question you have to ask yourself, Eats – can I call you Eats? – is what is more likely, that a Hume would keep his bargain, or would he blow himself up just because he's been surrounded by Baknamy?'

'You will not use it; Hume greedy of own life.'

Vaan shook his head smiling fatuously, 'True, true, not saying that I want to obliterate myself. I've seen what this stuff can do and believe me it's not pretty, but, I'm thinking that _you_, might just decide to kill all of _us_; because we're Humes and all Humes know Baknamy love to kill Humes wherever you find us….so maybe I'm thinking I have nothing to lose, and this way, at least, I take all of you with me.'

The Baknamy blinked in surprise and the tension ratcheted up another notch, until, somewhat ridiculously and entirely unintentionally, Filo sneezed as the cold wet rain permeated her armour. It was hard to maintain a state of taut stalemate when a pretty girl couldn't stop sneezing.

Vaan grinned and without warning tossed the shard of Nethicite onto the ground at Eats Fast and Kills Faster Leynir's feet. The creature immediately shied away and all the Baknamy sucked in a quick breath of panic expecting to be evaporated in an implosion of condensed Mist at any moment.

It did not happen; it had taken the power of a Light Cruiser Shiva's entire engine to make the Dusk Shard blow and it would take a lot more to ignite the power in that one little facet of the Sun Cryst……but the Baknamy didn't have to know that.

'Here,' Vaan gestured to the shard, 'it's a peace offering. With a piece of Nethicite in your possession there's no way any Hume will dare take the Baknamy land from you again. I think that should make us even, huh?'

For a long moment the Baknamy Eats Fast and Kills Faster only stared at Vaan; Vaan had the feeling that if he could clearly see the Baknamy's mouth it would be hanging open in disbelief.

'Hume would give Baknamy power like that?'

Vaan shrugged, 'Looks that way. It's not like we don't have more where that came from, so I wouldn't start thinking that Dalmasca is weak, Eats, because I will come back and I will blow you up if I have to, understood?'

'Why would Hume-Vaan do this for Baknamy?'

A shaft of pale, dulled sunlight fought its way through the thick, heavy, smoothing clouds of Mist to fall exhausted and sickly upon the muddy ground. The sunlight glinted half-heartedly in the prismatic sharp edges of the shard.

'Hume-Vaan needs Baknamy help; so I'm doing as Humes do, I'm cutting a deal.' Vaan shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck, absently, addressing the ground at his feet as he spoke.

'Have you ever heard the saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Well I've never been sure about that one. The way I see it is that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but neither is he my enemy's friend; diplomacy is just about reminding the enemy of my enemy of that fact and also pointing out to him, or you actually, that _you_ don't need another enemy in _me_.'

Vaan waited but clearly his model of diplomacy was beyond the comprehension of both sides of this affray. The stupefied silence was deafening.

Vaan rolled his eyes and tried again, 'Eats, if we fight each other there's a pretty good chance you will win, but then Dalmasca will just send more soldiers if we die and eventually you and your people will either be killed or driven from your home; you'll lose in the end and what's the point in that if we don't even need to fight each other to begin with?'

Eat Fast and Kills Faster seemed to understand that, 'Why Hume-Vaan threaten Baknamy if Hume-Vaan not want violence?'

Vaan nodded his head, expecting this question, 'Because I don't trust the Baknamy and the Baknamy don't trust Humes; now we both know we can kill the other so we don't have to waste time doing it to prove a point. We have a common enemy, let's kill them together instead.'

He grinned triumphantly and waited.

Eat Fast and Kills Faster shifted on his mount before looking back to his equally dumbfounded soldiers, 'Baknamy go to Baknamy Elders to speak of this; Humes stay where they are or Baknamy hunt you down and kill you.'

Vaan smiled placidly, 'Take your time; and you can take the shard with you if you want. I think the cart's stuck in the mud anyway, so we're not going anywhere in a hurry.'

In one confused, muddled, wary and perplexed phalanx the Baknamy withdrew; Vaan, still smiling cheerfully, raised a hand and waved as they vanished back into the thick fringe of trees they had first ambushed him from.

Shaking his dripping hair from his face once the Baknamy were gone Vaan turned back to his soldiers, who to a man (and one woman, still sniffling against the wet) were staring at him agog, 'Alright people let's get this cart out of the mud, before it sinks for good.'

Vaan ambled forward and looked askance at his soldiers when they just continued to drip water and stare at him mute and open mouthed; a grin tugged at his mouth but Vaan maintained his vacuous countenance regardless.

'Vaan?'

'Yes, Fi?'

Filo blinked, wiped her nose on her gauntleted arm and cast a look to the soldiers for support, when they just continued to stare she sighed and drew herself upright, 'Vaan,'

'Yes, Filo?' he repeated patiently.

'_Vaan, _where did you learn how to do _that_?'

'Do what?'

Vaan was trying to figure out what to do with the piece of cloth that had been covering the shard. Eventually he decided to throw it into the back of the cart with the gun powder and miscellaneous supplies.

Filo had grown pink in the cheeks, her green eyes flashing, '_That' _she gesticulated wildly as she tried to find words for his virtuoso performance of bizarre diplomacy, '_That_, that; what you just did…._that!_'

'Oh _that_, that,' Vaan rubbed the back of his neck and scuffed his boots across the slippery, muddy ground, discovering a small pebble and kicking it loose of its tomb of mud, eventually he shrugged and addressed Filo contriving to look aggrieved.

'Fi, don't you know by now, that I am a really _influential_ man?' he almost whined, using the same grating tone that had driven his friends to distraction nine years ago on their quest. He scuffed his feet against the mud, only succeeding in splashing water up his legs.

'I mean, my best friend is an Empress, I'm a queen's right-hand man and a legendary sky pirate's one time apprentice; did you really think I couldn't fix five hundred years of hatred between Baknamy and Humes with a little flashy talking?'

Without waiting for Filo's exasperated reply Vaan turned on his heel and wandered off towards an interesting patch of pale yellow flowers that looked worth closer investigation. It was only once he was sure he was out of ear-shot of any of his troupe that he let himself burst out laughing.

It was good to be a fool most of the time, and Vaan was very good at it, but sometimes, just sometimes, it was even more exhilarating to show his true colours.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter Twenty-One: History in the hands of man; the future in my hands alone**

_A/N: This is the second part of a double update, please don't miss out on the preceeding chapter ;)_

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It may have been due to his inveterate cynicism or his former profession as, if not a villain per se, then certainly a damned good criminal, but Balthier had never believed that bad men suffered in the end and good always triumphed.

The truth was more convoluted and confused than that.

He had heard it hypothesised that there was no such thing as good and evil; that any act can be twisted and re-envisioned depending on personal perspective, that it was, essentially, all a matter of interpretation.

Balthier had his doubts about this. He had met a number of reprehensible, despicable characters (he'd been trained in sky piracy by one such monster in Hume clothing) but it was not the bad in people that convinced him that abstract principles such as 'good' and 'bad' existed; it was the good people he had met that convinced him of the dichotomy of good and evil in all Humes.

Comparing himself to such luminaries of selflessness as he had had the dubious fortune as to meet in his time, Balthier had come to two basic conclusions; the first of which was that he had never been, and would never be, counted among their number, and secondly, he was hardly alone in this.

In Balthier's mindset there were the good, the bad, and the merely morally ambivalent; Balthier considered himself within the later majority. He wasn't an exemplar of moral rectitude and goodness by any stretch, nor was he an utterly irredeemable beast of a man.

Instead he had moments of both beastliness and sublime heroism and most of the time he was content to lurk in the grey areas.

Still he was absolutely certain, morally and intellectually, that he did not deserve _this._

As the pain began to erode the happy seclusion of his existential distraction Balthier gritted his teeth and refused, marshalling all his bloody-minded stubbornness, to give his tormentors the satisfaction of hearing him cry out.

_They were burning the soles of his gods' be-damned feet!_

The ticklish, almost annoyingly vague, burning pain playing over the soles of both his feet was almost eclipsed by the stomach twisting scent of burning flesh (_his_ burning flesh). Breathing raggedly with eyes squeezed shut Balthier tried to avoid biting right through his bottom lip as the pain simply continued, unabated.

He had experienced pain so much more all-consuming that this; he had been shot, poisoned, beaten, whipped until his back was shredded, starved and left to rot in dark holes dug from the ground in his past; he knew all about endurance, but this……it was the sheer pettiness of the torture that nearly unbalanced his mind.

It was cruelty for cruelties sake and it set a taper burning in his mind that rivalled the monstrous heat lapping at his feet.

'For the gods' sake enough.'

Balthier could hear Basch haranguing his tormentors somewhere else in a reality that existed outside of the narrow awareness of the excruciating pain in the soles of his feet, but it was distant and irrelevant.

All Ivalice paled into insignificance compared to the mind-wrenching, agonising torment radiating from the bottom of his feet and racing through his screaming nerve-endings to jab persistently into his brain.

The pain was all the worse because it was not so terribly, stunningly, intense that it robbed him of wits or consciousness, as the greater, more artful, tortures could do.

Instead he was acutely aware of the fact that a person wearing the face of an almost-friend was causing him pain and there was not a gods damned bloody thing he could do to stop it.

'Enough; be done with you. If you would kill us, kill us. This sadism has no point.'

The harsh scrap and jingle of Basch's chains against the wall he was presumably still strung up against created a grinding, disparate harmony that Balthier's wild mind clung to as a distraction.

Panting and soaked in pain sweat Balthier forced his eyes open and looked into the face of the being hidden under Elza's likeness, who crouched on the floor of the stone cell and idly flicked the lit jet flame over the soles of his feet as his skin cracked and blistered.

He stared down into those cold eyes that had never belonged to Elza and something neither morally ambivalent, nor cynical, rose from the fissure of pain in his mind.

'You're going to die,' he told the woman in a voice rough and hoarse but steady all the same, 'I hope that Kry paid you in advance, for I shall see to it that you have no chance to enjoy your wages of sin when I am free.'

It was not Balthier's usual style to make such crass and tasteless threats (they were beneath his considerable dignity) but right at this moment, with his feet blackening, Balthier threw dignity to the wind.

The woman turned her dead eyes away from him with nothing but disdain for his threats (a mistake; Balthier had very rarely decided to _deliberately_ see to the death of another hume, but when he did he always succeeded).

'How?'

Balthier gasped a new question and then locked his teeth together against a strangled howl of pain as the woman withdrew the naked flame only to thrust his poor, beleaguered feet into a waiting bucket of ice cube wreathed water.

Tears dazzled his eyes and he fiercely blinked them back as across the cell from him he could see Basch's face drenched in sympathetic, compassionate horror, eyes caught in glassy imagining of exactly what Balthier was experiencing in exquisite torment at that moment.

'Ghn…..how...aghh….how did you do it?' he panted as fire and ice and screaming pain set his nervous system alight. His feet burned in ice water as the cold and remembered fire raced up his legs sending klaxon calls of stimulus to his brain.

The woman who was not Elza lifted bored eyes to his. She said nothing but there was just the hint of scornful of curiosity in her dead-eyed regard.

'How did you kill her?' he snarled, through clenched teeth as burning pain was drenched in agonised numbness.

Ultimately it did not matter to Balthier what answer this loathsome woman gave; that was not the purpose of the question. It honestly did not matter what the exact sordid, tragic details of Elza's death were; it did not add or diminish the genuine grief he felt at her passing (and it surprised him that he should feel it so keenly and that it was not merely guilt – a person he had known for years was now dead, it……hurt).

Still this was the only requiem Elza was like to get and Balthier would not deny her memory the right to an explanation.

It was also the case that, despite knowing that the knowledge would do nothing to make what was done less pointless and cruel, Balthier himself still wanted to know, _needed_ to know.

Even if it was only so that he could lie and give Elza (and Rikken) a more fitting last moment than he imagined reality had granted the pair, when it came time to break the news to those who would care enough to mourn them properly.

He would make heroes out of victims; it was the least he could do for two people he had never bothered to befriend in life.

'She killed herself; stupid mare. Mayhew came to her in the guise of his brother and the daft wench believed him a wraith from the other side. She went and killed the one-eyed man in his sleep and then threw herself from the Cerobi bluffs. Bloody stupid bint.'

(Pitiful; Elza, Rikken, you deserved so much better than that.)

The ice water had numbed his legs up to mid-calf and while that gangling creeping pain sent erratic jolts through his tired nerves, the surcease in immediate agony allowed Balthier the use of his more complex cognitive functions.

'His brother?'

And the final piece fell into place; Balthier had been unable to fathom the connection between Kry and Aeneas, though he recognised now that there must be one, and one that was not nearly twelve years mouldering in an unmarked grave.

Now it seemed he had discovered that causal link.

'I see,' he breathed not bothering to waste the energy on any emotional response to this almost anti-climatic revelation, 'This brother, Mayhew is his name, you say, and he once worked with Kry and my father, is that it?'

The surly woman did not do him the courtesy of answering. Balthier scowled at the top of the woman's head in a futile attempt to see through the glamour of the Quidion spell to the true visage beneath it.

Balthier had no interest in discovering the woman's true identity, he suspected from her accent alone that she was merely a reprobate from Balfonheim, enticed to play a part in this elaborate vengeance by the promise of Gil and, even more wretched, the chance of three square meals and a bed for the night.

Balthier did not believe in evil………it was his defence against reality.

'And was it under this _Mayhew's_ orders that you decided to perpetrate this abuse on my person, hmm?'

Basch was watching Balthier carefully from the opposing wall, but Balthier only had eyes for the woman at his feet.

'What's it to yer?' she demanded essentially confirming his hypothesis.

Balthier smirked faintly, because gods knew he would not let a trifling thing such as immense physical and emotional pain get in the way of his performance.

'Oh, no reason really,' he replied airily, 'I merely wished to get the measure of the man as I doubt I will have the opportunity to personally spit in his eye. No doubt he'll be dead soon enough.'

The false Elza's face creased in belligerent confusion, 'What yer talkin' 'bout?'

Balthier allowed his smirk to widen fractionally and deliberately looked over the woman's head to Basch.

'Shall we wager, my good man?' he gestured with a turn of his head, about the only body part he could comfortably move, 'Two hundred Gil says this Mayhew has already been dispatched; I'll throw in another hundred that Ashe has done the deed personally.'

Basch's face wrinkled in confusion the near mirror of the woman's, 'Balthier?'

At the same time the woman leapt to her feet, 'What yer talkin' 'bout yer smarmy git?'

Balthier regarded the woman with bored, sardonic eyes, 'You are a pawn in the games of great men, my dear little slattern,' he purred with honey-venom dripping benign damnation with every word, 'have no fear, your number shall be up next.'

Without allowing the woman the chance at reprisal he looked over at Basch, 'This is pure conjecture, you understand, but I think from the strength of the evidence that I am right.'

Basch cocked his head to the side questioningly but said nothing, ready to listen, even though he had no idea what convoluted game Balthier was now playing.

'I am going out on a limb, but I think it seems likely that Mayhew was the mastermind behind Ashe's capture. He seems the sort to try and use a man's wife against him, disregarding that this wife is no man's tool. If he were here he would have tortured or killed me himself by now….therefore, likely, Ashe and Mayhew are elsewhere.'

Basch quirked his scarred eyebrow and something unspoken passed between them; a previous, unobserved conversation remembered by both men, and a plan vaguely hashed out, put into practice with a few carefully chosen and seemingly off-hand words from Balthier.

'Aye,' Basch growled, 'I'll meet your wager, Balthier, and raise you that Fran has mustered arms enough to deal with any threat to Dalmasca's sovereignty.'

Balthier smiled slightly understanding the tacit mention of Fran in accordance to their previous, secret conversation (thank you Basch, your assistance is appreciated). The woman looked angrily between the two of them, impotent in her suspicion.

'Enough double-talkin' swine,'

She lashed out with her hand and back-handed Balthier across the jaw; his head was knocked to the side and his teeth sliced the inside of his lip. Absently he licked the salty blood away.

'Temper, temper, my girl, did no one teach you of lady-like deportment, hmm?'

The woman, Elza's face sitting uncomfortably upon an expression contorted and mottled with rage, snarled before dropping swiftly down to the ground and wrenching the bucket of ice water from the floor, painfully knocking Balthier's feet away as she did so.

She threw the wooden bucket and contents at Balthier's chest before turning and hurrying from the tiny Pharos cell room.

Balthier shook icy water from his face and gritted his teeth against the cold as rivulets of slush ran down his bare torso and seeped uncomfortably underneath the waistband of his trousers. He did not doubt for a moment that a large bruise would soon form over his breastbone where the bucket had impacted with his flesh.

'Well,' he breathed out carefully, 'needless to say I did not much enjoy that.'

Basch shook his head with a certain wry respect in his eyes, 'Aye; I would question your sanity more than I do already had you said other.'

Balthier accepted this with a wry grimace of his own, 'Mind over matter, Basch, but then I doubt I need tell you that. You who survived two years in a large cage suspended over a deep drop underground, hmm.'

Basch actually chuckled, 'You need not be reduced to base attempts at flattery Balthier; I have already agreed to pass your message to Fran.'

'And I am grateful for that Basch, however that was not an attempt at base flattery,' he sighed, 'Can we not be done with this squabbling now, I am heartily sick of it all.'

Basch managed to look at once amused, questioning, and slightly condescending with the judicious movement of one scarred brow (Balthier wondered vaguely if he had been taking lessons from Fran?).

'Aye? I'd not thought to hear such a thing from you, even under our current circumstances.'

Balthier ignored the statement and instead looked at the more or less healed dark puckered scar on the other man's torso where the magicite crossbow bolt had been removed and the wound treated by the same people who had rendered the injury in the first place.

'How's your stomach, Basch?'

'Well enough.'

'Hmm,' Balthier was once again troubled by his feet. Now the numbness from the ice water soaking had worn off he could almost feel each individual blister on the soles of his feet. He could almost taste the throbbing, itching, scratching texture of the burns on his tongue, the ache reverberating in his mind.

'I do not think it will be long now before Kry comes for me himself; I doubt it will take much negotiation to have him set you free.' Balthier said talking over the undercurrent of pain, 'Kry is not a natural villain. You are not necessary to his success and while a proper villain would simply kill you, Kry would probably sooner you simply be gone from here.'

Basch studied Balthier, 'You know this man well Balthier?'

'No, not well at all, it is more that I know his sort,' Balthier smiled faintly, 'And he and I have something of value in common, that allows me some insight at least.'

'And I suppose you will not be sharing with me what that commonality is, correct?'

A sly chuckle escaped Balthier's lips, 'I have always thought you a perceptive man, Basch, I am pleased to see I was correct in that surmise.'

Basch simply gave him what counted with the other man, as a filthy look, but Balthier was not really paying attention. He was trying to build up the courage to attempt to wriggle the toes of his right foot and debating with himself if it was worth the inevitable pain this would cause.

Basch heaved a deep sigh, 'If you insist on hoarding your secrets even now I'll not waste breath attempting to dissuade you,' pale blue eyes regarded him keenly, 'but you are sure that Vaan will act as you predict, and Fran will understand this message you would have me bring her?'

It was Balthier's turn to give the other man a look of utter disbelieving disdain as he drawled smilingly, 'Basch please, I live my life on the basic tenet that all life revolves around my wishes, would you take from an injured man his most treasured delusion now?'

Basch actually snorted in disgust, 'Any other man would leave you to your fate, most richly deserved, and be nary troubled by the act.'

Balthier allowed himself a wider smile, 'Ah, but Basch, you are a _good man_, and as such, you have little choice but to acquiesce to my wishes.'

'Aye, and how many a good man have found themselves your catspaw in times past, I wonder?'

For just a moment something dark and cold touched the pained edges of Balthier's psyche at Basch's half-jesting slur against him; he fought for, and maintained, his cavalier smirk and demeanour however, 'A great many, I dare say, and equal that the number of evil men as well. As I say, all Ivalice swings to my whims, Basch.'

Basch looked him in the eye, keen and sharp, 'Be careful Balthier, I know you but jest to stave off the pain in your body, but I hear in such words the echo of another man's arrogance: 'history in the hands of man', rings a hollow echo in your speech.'

Balthier regarded him smoothly, blandly, untouched by the warning and the criticism. He had heard it all before, in recent hours his own thoughts had cycled through similar fears, but Balthier had become adapt at smiling into his own personal abyss.

He knew himself, he knew his strengths and his faults; he knew (as no one else did) his every crime and sin and even now, when push had come to shove, he flatly refused to bow down and repent.

He was the bloody leading man and this was _his_ story; let Ivalice repent for his sins, Balthier was too busy with greater concerns.

'I have no interest in history, Basch, it is a realm of dead things. I look to the future, wherein in the real bounty lies.'

He was the leading man (burned of foot but unbroken) history had no claim on him yet, and whether it judged him a man of good or evil was none of his concern. He knew who he was and he already knew how Kry and Mayhew would pay for daring to presume that they could cast the leading man in a role not of his choosing.

The man who controlled the present controlled the future and, ultimately, claimed the prize; Balthier, of course, had already loaded the dice and rigged the game before Kry and Mayhew threw their hats into the ring.

Triumph eternal to the leading man; it was time to play his full hand….the hand Cid dealt him.

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_A/N: Next up…..a death in Nabudis?_


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter Twenty-Two: Bleeding down to inevitability**

_A/N: Umm, I want to apologise for this chapter…..I don't think it's very good but I just can't do better…sorry! _

_Also this story is giving me grief. It wants to go EPIC, I mean the sort of overblown extravaganza that will make 'Provocations' look like a cheerful walk in the park….. And I'm not so sure, I know I have a tendency to be melodramatic._

_So I'm opening it up to feedback from all of you who reads and reviews: do you want EPIC or manageable? Do you want neat 30-odd chapters or (gasp) closer to fifty chapters to round off this __absolutely, positively __**last**__ part of the 'Conversations' series? ;)_

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She had heard tales, of course, immediately after the fall when the deaths of her father and Rasler and the loss of all she had known was still an angry, screaming wound in her soul.

The men of the resistance would talk; snatches of rumour, hearsay, gossip and horror stories. They would speak in low voices and drown their dark truths in slang that they hoped a Princess of the blood would not understand.

Still she had heard them talk; whenever they spoke of Nabudis burning and the white sky that pounded the surrounding area's with Mist rain and poison as far south west as the Highwaste and as far east as the entrance to the Phon Coast, there voices would take on an awed reverence, a quality of horror that was almost deference.

When, nine years ago, Vaan and Penelo had stumbled into the Deadlands, she had not had courage enough to go with Basch to retrieve them. She had been afraid to see with her own eyes the whispered truths the men had spoken of.

It was ironic therefore that when the time finally came for Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca to return to the fortress of Nabudis, where many moons ago she had spent her first wedding night within, she had no time to ponder the fate of Rasler's kingdom.

The Baknamy infant cradled in her arms was all Ashe could think on.

The infant was an almost lurid green colour with shiny skin and large ears. Ashe was not an expert on Baknamy but she rather suspected that this creature was barely more than a suckling babe and already that green skin was growing bloodless and tinged with blue from oxygen depletion.

Ashe leaned over the baby in her arms and breathed into the tiny creature's open mouth. She watched the tiny, bird like chest rise like a bellows and then, crushingly, remain still, untouched by breath of its own. The infant was dead, its skin cold under her fingers.

Ashe bowed her head in silent remorse and formless prayer as she shifted on the cold, cracked and defiled broken tiles of the floor of the Fortress and returned the infant to the arms of its mother, who had succumbed to the ambient Mist in the air hours previously.

Rising shakily to her feet Ashe paced the length of the chamber, pillars fallen and lying haphazard over the cream and grey tiles that had once created an elaborate mosaic depicting the founding of the ancient Fortress' key stone.

The air was cold and yet close and heavy. Dust motes and strange mildew scents filled the empty space with an almost physical weight so that Ashe felt as if she was pushing through invisible burial shrouds to reach one end of the former banquet hall or the other.

Furnishings had either rotted away or been obliterated at the point of the bomb's impact, or perhaps simply decayed to nothing in the intervening years, so that the vast room she was trapped inside offered no comfort or possibility for comfortable rest.

She had no real idea of how long she had been trapped in here. A hole in the ceiling allowed the Mist light of day or night to glare painfully brightly down at her, the sky garishly pearlescent and harsh to her eyes. However there was no sun visible to track the passing of the hours.

She had estimated that it had been some two days since Mayhew had deigned to bring her any food and perhaps some twelve hours since he had come with water. Ashe added perhaps another handful of days on top of that since her capture and surmised that she had been a prisoner some six days.

It was galling to think that despite all she had endured, achieved, and triumphed over in her life she now found herself at the mercy of a man without any to begin with.

Had she been a lesser woman she might have regretted the broken nose and teeth that she had cost Mayhew when he made one more attempt on her personal dignity. Still, she would die with her pride if she must die at all.

Pride and shame; with nothing left to do but retrace her steps across the chamber Ashe was forced once more to look upon what her hubris and ambition had wrought.

Dead Baknamy littered the floor and the only thing that prevented decomposition was the uncanny Mist laden air within this room.

Not a scientist by training or disposition, Ashe nevertheless knew that it would only be a matter of time before the High Mist content in the air began to take its toll on her.

Humes were brilliantly adapted to accommodate Mist and use it in magick or Quickenings. Unlike the Viera, whose sensitivity to Mist was their greatest weakness, or the Seeq who could barely cast a spell, so resistant to Mist were their bodies, Humes were perfectly designed to accommodate the vagaries of magick and Mist without being overly adversely effected.

Despite all this, and despite a natural affinity for Magick, Ashe could already see upon her limbs the tell-tale signs of encroaching Mist poisoning of the sort that killed droves of people after the initial explosion in the fallout of the Nabudis calamity.

Pent up Mist inside the cells of her body, yearning to be unleashed in fire and might either via Magick of eldritch Quickening, tightened her chest and swelled her veins, paining her heart as the beleaguered organ struggled to pump engorged blood through her body. Her skin was blotchy with raised and tender rosettes of reddish, black blemishes were Mist mingled with her blood inside her veins.

She was not in pain yet, but soon, if the accounts of the Mist poisonings she had read about were in any way accurate, she would be in considerable pain.

Curling up in a corner of the derelict function room and resting her chin on her drawn up knees, her arms about her legs, Ashe pondered the dark irony that even if she was to be rescued at this moment, she might still die from poisoning……just as the Baknamy had.

The Baknamy who had died because she longed to excise the guilt of her survival from her being once and for all; her desire to restore Nabudis to appease the dead that did not even haunt her anymore had come at terrible cost.

Perhaps it was only right she suffer for what she had done, albeit unwittingly, to the Baknamy?

For this reason Ashe had decided that, should those great doors open, she would unleash every ill-begotten erg of Magick in her body upon whoever showed their face in the threshold. She would happily bring the damned fortress tumbling down once and for all if it meant Mayfew died too.

Possibly, when considering previously expressed convictions to die in a blaze of righteous fury, it was as well that when salvation finally did arrive (delayed, though Ashe knew it not, because the cart kept getting stuck in the mud and one of the Chocobo's broke free of its harness) the eponymous saviour of the moment chose not to use the door at all.

Instead, for reasons best known to himself when Ashe's Captain of the Dalmascan Knight Order crashed into the chamber, he chose to do so by falling through the hole in the ceiling.

Ashe had been dozing fitfully in her near foetal position in the far corner when the sound of gun fire and the unmistakable tang of blood on the still air seeped into her awareness. She leapt to her feet and looked to the hole in the ceiling just in time to see Vaan fall.

'Ahhhh--ooooommpphh!'

As the familiar figure crashed down onto the tiled floor (the vestiges of a Float spell the only thing saving him from a less than heroic death) something roughly six inches long, impossibly sharp, and the colour of polluted sunset and egg yoke with the appearance of deformed glass, rolled from his hand to come to a halt, faintly glowing, by Ashe's feet.

Seeing only a potential weapon Ashe grabbed up the shard and held it ready, barely heeding the sharp sting of pain when the jagged edges bit into her palms. Scant few feet before her the armoured Vaan lookalike struggled groggily to his feet.

'Ashe!' the man grinned in a cheery loose lipped way, absently wiping blood from a wide gash bisecting his forehead, 'Hey Fi, I found her!'

Ashe watched the man who looked and sounded and acted very much like Vaan with wary eyes; she had seen too often the brilliant illusions wrought by the Artifice Quidion to take anyone or anything at face value. When he tried to approach her she raised the Shard defensively and he stopped abruptly.

'Vaan?'

'Well yes. Come on Ashe, we've got to go, Eats and his people have Mayhew mostly cornered by he's locked himself into one of the inner chambers of the fortress. He says he has a shard of his own and he'll blow the place up if we try and break down the door.'

Ashe ignored everything the man had just said, unwilling to be drawn into a possible imposter's deceptions, 'Prove it.'

She jabbed the excitedly pulsing shard towards Vaan who paled slightly when he saw how it was reacting to the presence of a Dynast Heir and how Ashe (unbeknownst to her) was all but crackling with unfocussed Magickal intent.

'Prove to me that you are Vaan. Do it quickly or I will sever your neck with this shard.'

Vaan swallowed hard, 'Umm….well….er...'

The Vaan imposter before her looked acutely uncomfortable and almost immediately began to rub at the back of his neck in harried fashion. His steel boots scraped harshly against the cracked tiles; Ashe was forced to admit that if this was an impersonation it was a very good one.

'_The note_!' The possible Vaan grinned incongruously as Ashe remained impassive and suspicious.

'What note?' she asked cautiously.

Vaan continued to grin (which was helping to convince her that he was who he said he was; no one else would smile inanely while facing death by rough handed decapitation).

'The note you thought was from Balthier back before you married.' Vaan continued triumphantly. Ashe merely narrowed her eyes. It was not inconceivable that Mayhew, obsessed with Balthier as he was, might know something of her husband's habit of leaving her badly written and frustrating obtuse notes when he was in the process of doing something reckless, or illegal, or both.

Sensing that she would need more than a vague statement about some form of note Vaan galloped on cheerfully with his chosen recollection, 'You remember, the one I wrote about his family entry in the Archadian book of Peerage?'

Memory jolted to life as she remembered Vaan insisting, while within the Beirouge that she ought marry Balthier, during a time of fierce drought and shortage in Dalmasca, and with her insane cousin Joaquin hammering on the airship hatch. Still, while the chances of Mayhew knowing about the note forgery were minuscule she was not prepared to trust this possible Vaan just yet.

She was in this predicament because she had failed to grasp how dangerous Mayhew and Kry could be and she would not underestimate them again.

Vaan was showing the first signs of exasperation as from somewhere within the hollow, shattered womb of the fortress shouts and cries of battle echoed. He made one last appeal in a voice caught between something that was almost annoyance with her stubbornness coupled with an adolescent whining lilt he should have long outgrown.

'Come on Ashe, you know what I'm talking about; the note with the thing about the Atholl sheep, written by some guy who's been dead centuries but they still call the book after him….what was his name? Oh, yes, Hogarth! Hogarth's Peerage volume Twelve, I even left you a copy of the book.'

Ashe blinked and lowered the shard, relief rushing out of her with most of her remaining strength, 'It is you,' she breathed as Vaan ambled over to help support her weight.

'Course it is, I mean I'd be a pretty bad Knight if I didn't rescue the Queen, after all. That's worse than letting you get captured in the first place…..hey!' Vaan yelped when Ashe whacked him about the head with her empty hand, 'What was that for?'

'_Why did it take you so long to get here?_' she hissed grabbing a hold of the tender top of his ear with her swollen fingers, 'And what has happened to my kingdom?'

Vaan managed to wriggle free and immediately rubbed at his reddened ear only stopping when the vibrations a small explosion from somewhere further within the fortress complex rocked the floor they both stood on.

'It's alright Ashe, Penelo is covering for you using the other Artifice Quidion. The twins are with Fran in Landis and Balthier is...well...'

Both Ashe and Vaan were staring at the thickly barricaded (from the outside) doors leading out of this chamber as the sounds of battle increased in tempo and the scent of old Mist heated by fresh magick stung their nostrils. Nevertheless Ashe glared levelly at Vaan when he rather tellingly trailed off.

'Balthier is what?'

'Umm...he's...playing his part.' Vaan said with a sudden (vaguely relieved) grin. He then broke any number of antiquated laws of etiquette and deportment when addressing one's sovereign by grabbing Ashe by the elbow and towing her towards the big double doors.

'Hey, Ashe, do you think if we work together we can smash this door open with magick?'

If Vaan was hoping to distract Ashe from pursuing her numerous pertinent questions, not least of which involved demanding to know how he came to fall through the roof to begin with, with such a reckless suggestion (using aggressive magick in a high Mist content area was like holding onto a hand bomb too long after the fuse had been lit, it was like to rebound badly on the caster) then his objective succeeded brilliantly.

Ashe stared at him aghast until Vaan actually quailed a little under her steely regard, 'Oh, right, I guess I'll just try and, I don't know, pry off the hinges or something then.'

Thankfully, or perhaps not, Ashe did not have to submit to the indignity of watching Vaan try and pry apart two foot thick wooden doors with a pocket knife because the self same doors were sudden blown up in a rush of violent magick.

The wave of magick washed up a body that came to rest almost artfully at Vaan's feet; a mop of auburn hair wildly dishevelled and the hint of soft curves under body armour the only indication of the sex of the person, aside from Vaan's alarmed cry of:

'Filo!'

As Vaan lunged forward to turn over the limp body at his feet and brush the hair from a battered and bruised face, Ashe stood facing the door as wild, blood stained, and manic Mayhew staggered in brandishing an odd box like contraption as his only discernable weapon.

'End game Your Highness,'

Mayhew's sulphurous green eyes were impossibly, intensely, bright and his face was white and sweating under a mask of fresh red blood. The sleeves of his frockcoat were drenched up to the elbows in gore and his clothes shredded all over. Still, for all that, Mayhew did not look overly injured.

'……Vaan….the box…..don't let him use the box…..'

'Shhhh, Filo, be still, you're bleeding.'

Filo was trying to raise herself up off the floor, rising up on her elbows and crying out in pain as the movement aggravated cracked ribs, 'Box…..Baknamy….they just... disappeared. He made them dust and they blew away….'

Vaan cradled Filo in his arms as Ashe faced off against the swaying, grinning Mayhew who held aloft the roughly hand-sized box like contraption that vaguely resembled a remote detonator.

A high pitched giggle bubbled from Mayhew's lips as Ashe fought down her own fatigue to stare him down, the strange glowing shard clasped in her hands.

'Well, well Queen Ashelia has taken up the nethicite has she? But it won't work because we've done it, Kry and I, we've figured out how to defeat _Mist_.'

Ashe looked sharply from the lunatic before her to the shard in her hand and finally recognition dawned. She almost threw the shard from her when she realised what she held like a weapon close to her chest; deifected nethicite – the bane of her life.

On the ground Vaan tried to stem the flow of blood from a bubbling stab wound in Filo's left lung, his eyes narrowed and fixed on Mayhew with murderous rage. Filo, growing increasingly weak, clutched at his shoulder and tried to pull herself up.

'It's a weapon Vaan…..the Baknamy tried to force...(cough)..._him_ from his hiding space and he used that….(cough)…..urnnn….he used that _thing….._and……' Filo's voice died and she slumped, almost unconscious, back into Vaan's arms.

Mayhew laughed delightedly with the shrill brilliance of shattered glass, 'A weapon? No, no, no, not a weapon this,' he hefted the odd box-like object high above his head, staggering drunkenly as he did so, 'this is _salvation, _a way of restoring what Mist has maligned. We can undo it all Ashelia! No more Mist, can you imagine it?'

Something contracted in her heart at those words, and for a moment her spirits soared at the prospect of no more Mist; the prospect of a restored Nabudis still a potent, sharp-toothed longing within her but then, reality intruded.

Mist was life.

That was the first tenant of both all scientific and magickal law in Ivalice. All life came from the Mist in some form of another; Mist was the spark that fired the spirit of all sentient beings. It could be a force of monstrous destruction without a question of doubt, but then all life was, in its own way, wedded irrevocably to destruction.

'But if you remove all Mist nothing will live in Nabudis at all.' Ashe whispered too confused initially to fully grasp the truth of his intentions.

To remove the advent of Mist was to extinguish the very essence of life; even Vayne Solidor and that pariah Doctor Cid had hesitated to do that.

'No, no, no, no,' Mayhew shook his head rapidly, red hair lashing his face, 'Do not be foolish Ashelia. All life here now is corrupt. It is wrong….maligned and twisted...we must erase it all so that we might start again.'

Sickeningly he smiled at her, expression softening to one of near dreaming rapture, 'Think on it, we can re-build Nabradia from the ground up, _you_ can re-create Nabudis in your own vaulted image and I will finally have redeemed my soul.'

'Sweet gods…….you are worse than Cid.'

Her breath caught in her throat and threatened to choke her as she realised the true, monstrous scope of Mayhew and Kry's plans, 'The Baknamy were just the beginning. You planned all along to wipe out all life in Nabradia.'

'It is wicked, corrupt; Impure. Ashelia would your fallen husband Rasler of Nabradia want Baknamy cretins and undead beasts walking his land; how can you oppose me? Why can't you see that this is righteous….that _I_ am righteous?'

'You are sick; a monster and a deluded one. You will never be righteous.'

Ashe snarled at him stung by mention of Rasler and knowing in her heart and soul that he would never have countenance such a thing. He would sooner Nabudis never rise again than sanction such whole scale genocide.

'…….box……don'……ahhhh…(cough, cough) don'….let him….the box….kill us all…'

Filo's blood was spreading across the cracked tiled floor underneath her but still she pointed weakly, wriggling in Vaan's arms, at the box Mayhew clutched tightly in his fist. Vaan was struggling to keep an Elixir bottle to her lips as she tried to claw her way across the tiles, determined to get the strange device away from him.

The two key players in the unfolding drama barely noted her heroic attempts however. Mayhew was staring at Ashe as though stricken to the quick by her words, then, with shocking speed he lunged and grabbed her, an arm locking about her neck as he seized up the Nethicite shard from her Mist numbed grip, pressing the point of it into her sternum.

'Ashe!'

Vaan leapt to his feet, drawing his sword, but hesitating when he saw that there was no way to attack Mayhew when he held Ashe hostage.

'Stay back tin-soldier or I will carve out the Dynast Queen's heart with the Occuria's pride and joy.'

Ashe could clearly see the torn expression take up residence upon Vaan's face as, to prove his sincerity, Mayhew dug the point of the shard into Ashe's stomach, tearing her clothes and drawing a shallow line of blood down her body; despite the bright, fierce bite of the cut, Ashe, remained strangely calm.

'Kill me if you will but I'll not aid your madness any more than I have already.'

She was resigned to her fate; if she was to die then she had only to ensure her death was fitting for her status.

Ashe closed her eyes briefly as she sought deep inside herself for the wellspring of raw magick at the centre of her soul where the power of Quickening lay. Imagining hands pulling on a rope that ran the depth of her body she pulled hand over hand, dredging the well of her soul for the fury of the Maelstrom's Bolt.

If she was to die she would die a Queen and not a tool of a jealous madman. She would die with her enemy's death screams music to her ears.

'Vaan take Filo and go. Tell what soldiers remain to retreat. That is a command.'

She opened her eyes in time to see Vaan shake his head, 'No Ashe. I won't do that and you shouldn't do what you're doing either.' he added pointedly seeing what Mayhew was too much a scientific fool to recognise – the imminent approach of a Cataclysmic Quickening.

'Enough; this is not how things were supposed to happen. Kry has betrayed me, I am sure of it.'

Mayhew jerked his arm tighter about her neck and, with the shard still poised to open her innards with one downward stroke, he pulled her towards the door, 'Don't move boy or I'll gut your Queen.'

Ashe was ready to unleash the Maelstrom's Bolt, the power tamped down by her will alone dancing through her tired limbs, when a tiny movement of Vaan's eyes and a shifting of his expression from grim worry to surprise stopped her.

Vaan's slow, lazy and vacuous grin slid into place, 'You say that box thing can get rid of Mist, huh?'

'That is the sort of gross, facile simplification I would expect from a moronic serf like you.' Mayhew scoffed as he tugged Ashe backwards towards the blown open doorway.

Vaan crouched down to carefully lift Filo into his arms, 'Does it have any effect on Nethicite...magick?'

Ashe frowned at him confused as she felt Mayhew twitch in similar confusion but then, Mayhew did not know Vaan and so did not know that no matter how seemingly pointless the statement, every word Vaan said had meaning.

Therefore, while Ashe tried to intuit Vaan's plan, Mayhew merely laughed with shallow bravado, 'Your pointless prattle wastes time. Now if you don't mind her Highness and I have an appointment at the Pharos Ridorana.'

It was with those words and at that moment that the confluence of actions leading to this one point in time converged. Everything that was to follow, whether an inevitable consequence of the foolishness of mortal men, or the act of a capricious and uncaring fate, it mattered not. All that mattered was this one, timeless shining moment on the edge of calamity when everything happened at once.

As the last seconds before the cataclysm bled out this is what happened, all in the blinking of a god's eye.

Vaan grinned, twisted on his heel and ran, as best he could with Filo a deadweight in his arms, to take shelter behind one of the few still standing pillars in the chamber.

As he did so Ashe released her Quickening as a distraction, while simultaneously grabbing for the shard of Nethicite and twisting her body so that she drove the crystal blade into Mayhew's groin. She then threw the culmination of her soul's might into the body of this hated man in the form of Maelstrom's Bolt.

Mayhew, screaming in pain as the cryst shard ate into soft tissue and internal organ, was thrown backward out of the chamber by the sublime force of Ashe's unleashed Quickening. He crashed into the wall of the outer corridor.

At that moment, incidences of disaster falling together like dominoes, the Baknamy survivors (whose presence Vaan had espied moments before) fell upon Mayhew. Some twenty Baknamy warriors, all brandishing daggers or their bare hands, swarmed over Mayhew's body like a hill of ants.

Without fanfare, mercy, or hesitancy they began tearing strips of skin from his body. Tendons were exposed and frayed like woollen thread while muscle was shredded with the ease of paper and veins were opened in a flying mist of blood and viscera.

Mayhew screamed and screamed, invisible under the writhing mass of Baknamy, as, almost reflexively, his hand convulsed around the box he still held, and one finger, yet to be wrenched from his hand by the vengeful Baknamy, depressed the button on the device.

Almost instinctively, as if realising what had happened on an intrinsic level, the Baknamy withdrew as one chattering mass. Vaan (having found a place of relative safety to deposit Filo) ran back to grab hold of Ashe and started to pull her towards the safety of the furthest reaches of the chamber.

Neither he nor Ashe knew what was to come but hard experience told them it would not be good.

Elsewhere, beyond the immediacy of the moment, and upon the activation of Mayhew's detonator, an airborne signal was sent spiralling throughout the Fortress to any one of a dozen Anti-Mist generators, the pride and joy of Professor Kry's eleven year toil.

Powering up with a whirring purr the generators (which were more accurately described as giant extractor fans) began the process of sucking all the Mist from the vicinity with a rapacious thirst that did not bear imagining.

Ashe and Vaan hit the floor of the chamber and threw themselves over Filo's unconscious body, covering their heads with their arms in a futile attempt to protect themselves from the gods only knew what.

All around them Baknamy screamed and shouted clamorous commands to one another as a strange, almost melodious, singing note sounded on the thrumming Mist clogged air.

The Mist filling the Fortress and saturating its remaining foundations swirled ice hot for one agonising second that seemed to last a millennia and then, with a subterranean sigh that sounded almost of satisfaction, the Fortress of Nabudis imploded and all the world went white.


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter Twenty-Three: A sky pirate's treasure; last will and testament and a new avenue of intrigue**

_A/N: Okay…..the general consensus seems to be for EPIC! Therefore I surrender all responsibility for trying to keep this story moderately sensible and thus begin the build up to the Epic proportions of this story!...but first the brief return of Hallie and Heios…._

_P.S for those who have not read 'War Privateer' and have no idea who Hamish Fon Denbak is, a quick explanation; Hamish was a Landis freedom fighter who Ffamran freed from Archadian jail….in doing so he ended up enslaved by sky pirates and this is how he became the Balthier we all know and love….he and Hamish had numerous run-ins before he met Ashe and Hamish is, possibly, the closest thing to a long-term friend Balthier will acknowledge having. _

_Also...thank you everyone, 85 reviews is absolutely phenomenal! ;)_

* * *

Hallie was sick, dizzy and her chest hurt from shrieking, but still she would not stop, 'Higher, higher……faster!'

'Ugh….you'll be the death of me.'

The big Landis man with the long silvered hair picked her up under the arms and threw her bodily into the air. Hallie shrieked with unabashed delight as her stomach hit the roof of her mouth and then plummeted to her feet as she came back down, caught by the big, smiling man once more.

'More!' she wound her arms about the man's big, strong neck and tugged on his braided hair for emphasis.

The man, whose name was Hamish Fon Denbak (though Hallie thought of him only as the 'Landis man'), despite being old (his hair was greyish silver and deep wrinkles crinkled his eyes at the corners) was still very strong and tough. He laughed hugely but, to her displeasure, set her down on her own two feet again.

'Now lassie, you might be full of vim and vigour but this old dog of war just can't keep up any longer.'

Hallie pouted and stamped her foot, 'What if I order you to do it?'

She demanded and the man grinned at her with big, straight teeth, 'Then I'll not do it. I am not one of your subjects' young lady. I am a free man of Landis.'

Hallie did not really hear his answer because her mind jarred on the phrase 'young lady' and her bottom lip trembled, 'Father calls me that.'

'Bugger me,' the man muttered under his breath, 'Now, lassie, let's not start to cry again.'

Hamish's big face creased in concern as he scooped up the young madam to forestall her tears.

He had had the care of the Princess and Prince of Dalmasca for something approaching a week and in that time had just about managed to distract the children from fretting over the absence of their parents; nevertheless it amazed him just how swiftly Hallie could go from screaming laughter to rampaging tears.

'Where is my father? Why are we not with mother in the palace?'

Hamish grimaced. The truth was he did not know the whereabouts of either Ffamran or his royal wife; Fran had arrived without fanfare made cryptic reference to debts of gratitude and friendship and dire need and then, within a day, left aboard her airship for the Pharos Ridorana.

Hamish, true-blooded republican, retired veteran of the war for Landissian independence (now won – in part due to the good graces of that rarest of breeds, an Archadian Emperor with a conscience), was a man of fifty-nine years who had spent almost all his life a soldier but he would nevertheless guard these children, the product of a Archadian rebel (and friend) and a free-thinking Dalmascan Queen, with his dying breath.

Thus he did not know how to answer the little girl's question with anything other than honesty, 'I don't know lass, but I have faith that your father has wit enough to wriggle his way out of any bind.'

Hallie put her sweaty cheek onto his shoulder and played absently with one of the ribbon twinned braids, 'Why do you call father 'Ffamran'? What is a 'Ffamran'?'

Hamish opened his mouth to answer when another, small fluting voice from somewhere down at his knees, interjected, 'You never pay attention, Hallie, Ffamran is father. It is father's true name.'

Hallie looked down at Heios who appeared like a mirage, making Hamish jump, right behind them.

Hallie, from her lofty perch, considered her brother's words thoughtfully; in truth she had always considered that 'Father' was her father's name, though she did acknowledge that others called him Balthier and sometimes _'Pirate'_.

'Well why does no one call him that then, Heios-the-know-it-all?' Hallie wriggled down from Hamish' arms and attempted to aggressively invade her twin's personal space.

Heios, munching disinterestedly on a red apple just stared back at her calmly, 'I don't know. It is some sort of secret. Mother and Father do not speak of Father's real name or his family line.'

Hamish, who had been wondering if he had inadvertently caused all manner of problems through his habit of simply calling his young friend by his birth name (Hamish had met Ffamran when the boy wore the Judge's armour, before he had even dreamed up the guise of Balthier – and thus would forever call him by the name). He wracked his brains to think up away of diverting the young ones from this potentially uncomfortable route of inquiry.

'I have heard people call father by his family name also, but although it is acknowledged that father is Archadian it is never spoken of. I do not think we are allowed to know of it.'

Hamish was struck, not for the first time, by how disturbingly like Ffamran little Heios was, they were both too damn clever for their own good. In Hamish's opinion it did not bode well for the wee lad that he had inherited his father's mind.

The Bunansa intellect was a double edged sword that tended to cut the possessor far more deeply than the victim.

'Oh, your father and your mother are fond of their intrigue. Don't let it worry your wee heads.' He declared bluffly, 'Now who's up for a swim in the lake?'

'Me! Me!' Hallie – a child with the attention span of a particularly agitated Chocobo and the energy of a rampaging herd of Behemoth - began jumping up and down, while her quieter more reserved brother looked from the direction of the small swimming lake to his half eater apple sceptically.

'I have just eaten; will that not make me ill should I swim?'

As Hallie ran off –stripping excess clothing as she did so – Hamish looked down on the serious dark child with the perpetually solemn expression.

Although Hamish had not met Ffamran until he was mere weeks shy of seventeen, it seemed to him that Heios was his father's true shadow. It was therefore a seeming inevitability that the little lad before him was destined for a life of infamy. He wondered if there was anything that could be done to forestall the boy's fall to notoriety but suspected that there was not (like father, like son, and there had been nothing Hamish could do to stop Ffamran turning pirate either).

'I don't reckon a wee swim will matter much. Not with a belly full of no more than apple, but if you feel a mite poorly you can simply come ashore.'

Heios seriously considered this and then nodded, absently reaching out to grasp Hamish' hand, 'Yes. That is true. I cannot see the sense in the notion that swimming on a full stomach makes one sick, in any event.'

Hamish looked down on the boy who munched his apple as they both approached the natural pool where Hallie was already floating, arms and legs spread like the points of a star, on the waters surface.

'Lad, have you ever thought of thinking less and having more fun?'

Hamish felt he had to ask; he had long held the view that had Ffamran been a happier, less repressed, child he might not have gone so far astray at the first taste of freedom.

Heios merely stared up at him blankly, 'How does one go about not thinking?'

Hamish sighed, 'Most of Ivalice manages it just fine lad. I dare say you'll make your own way of it however, much like your father.' He shook his head, 'anyway you go and swim.'

'You will not be swimming Hamish?'

Hamish chuckled, 'Sink like a stone, me, always have. I'll just sit on the bank and rest my bulk.'

Some half an hour later the children were enjoying themselves in the water (meaning that Heios was trying to swim laps in an orderly fashion and Hallie was trying to grab his ankles and pull him under) when Hamish espied movement from the other side of the pool. He rose to his feet as he recognised the points of long suede ears.

Neither child noticed the svelte Viera half hidden in foliage, nor did they mark Hamish' casual progress around the lake bank to meet her. It was only as he approached Fran that he saw that she was not alone.

'Greetings Fran and you, Judge Magister, I was not expecting to be seeing you,' Hamish greeted his fellow Landissian with careful distance.

The man with Fran was a recognised hero of the republic and a quiet man of simple honour, Hamish knew, but he also knew that the one Fon Ronsenberg had once pretended to be the other, and Hamish had bad association with the late Noah Fon Ronsenberg once known and feared as Magister Gabranth.

'Hamish,' Fran nodded her head in polite, cool greeting seemingly unconcerned by the fact that she was all but supporting the weight of Basch Fon Ronsenberg as he leaned against her, face drawn grey with pain.

'We are in need of healing supplies and curatives. Are such supplies available within your home?'

Hamish had been studying the other man, now he turned back to the oblivious children, much gladdened that he had thought up such a thorough distraction before he even had need of it.

'Aye; you'll find what you need in my cottage, take what you will and be welcome.'

Fran nodded once more, her own strange gaze lingering for a moment on the children, before turning without a word and leading the ailing Basch Fon Ronsenberg away before the twins saw a thing to distress them.

Hamish was now left to wonder what more he could come up with to keep the children in happy ignorance of the fact that Fran, who had set out to rendezvous with their father, came back with Ffamran's travelling company dripping blood to the woodland floor, but with no sign of Ffamran himself.

'Children!'

Walking to the waters edge he called the royal twins to him and they happily paddled over, 'How would you like to go on a treasure hunt?'

'Oooooooh yes! Just like a proper pirate!' Hallie tried to clap her hands in glee, forgetting she was treading water and momentarily bobbed under the surface only to pop back up a split second later spluttering.

'Aye, like that,' Hamish murmured distractedly, looking about him for inspiration, 'Bethesda has something special in her house, that she keeps hidden in a secret hiding place, why don't you two run over there and try and find it?'

He did not need to offer any further incitement; while Heios looked slightly doubtful Hallie was all enthusiasm and once the children were dressed and relatively dry, the sister dragged her brother off to find a treasure Hamish hoped his former second in command could spirit up from thin air.

Returning to his own abode Hamish walked in on Fran finishing the last touches to her healing ministrations. Fon Ronsenberg had a half-healed, but reopened, stomach wound that looked like the work of a crossbow bolt and he also bore the signs of shackles and chains upon his wrists and ankles. He had been speaking in low voice to Fran as Hamish arrived.

'…….those were his exact words: _tell Fran to retrieve my cache. She'll know what to do and what it means.' _

Fran turned to face Hamish as he approached, 'Heard did you?'

'Aye……so it is as bad as that, is it?'

'So it would appear.'

Fran and Hamish looked at each other a while longer while Fon Ronsenberg, the baffled messenger, looked confusedly between them, 'What is this 'cache' and what does it forebode?'

Hamish simply shook his shaggy head and took the stairs up to the second floor of his small, humble home, to the hidden recess in the wall of his bedroom behind the picture of Lantilla, Landis' capital, where he kept his most precious memento's.

'All pirates needs must have a cache of their own, else infamy be redundant. Balthier has requested that his own be opened.'

Fran's voice floated through the quiet of the cottage as Hamish sought out the metal box that Ffamran had demanded he keep in secrecy roughly about the time he decided to settle down and marry his comely young Queen.

'From your voice Fran it sounds as though this is not a request made lightly. Balthier surrendered unconditionally and bartered for my freedom in order to be sure this message reached you. Can any cache be so valuable?'

'A pirate's cache must only be opened either after the advent of their death or at such time that they expect to die and wish their partner, should they not be in similar dire circumstance, to reap the bounty for themselves, lest the pirate's enemies take the spoils.'

There was a lengthy pause upon Fran's reply in which time Hamish began his descent of the stairs with the box in his hands. He deposited the foot long metal box, slightly rusty at the hinges, upon his unvarnished kitchen table. Three pairs of eyes regarded the box in silence for a moment.

'I had expected something larger and,' Basch cleared his throat, 'more ostentatious from Balthier.'

Fran looked to Hamish, 'Know you what is inside?'

'Nay,' Hamish shook his head with rueful amusement, 'I did not bother to ask, either, no doubt had Ffamran thought me remotely curious he'd have hidden his treasure elsewhere, and you Fran? Do you know what he hid in here?'

'No. I know only what he told me; that it was treasure indeed. A treasure rare and valuable enough to be hoarded and not frittered away or discarded as was his usual practice.'

Basch was the one who took up the box and began to work the worn and rusted lock with a table knife.

'I fail to see how anything within this box will help him now. He is at the mercy of a man madder even than his father before him, with nought to defend him save the barbed tongue and twisted mind that put him in this state to begin with.'

'I'll wager that Ffamran is madder and shrewder than this other fellow.' Hamish retorted helping to pry open the near rust-welded shut lid of the box.

'Yet he fears that he is not; else he would not have sought that which is within the cache.' Fran stated with grim certainty as she watched the two men working.

The lid came open and crashed back onto the table with the force exerted upon it all of a sudden. Three pairs of eyes peered inside for the first sight of the treasure that the legendary sky pirate Balthier deemed important enough to keep hidden from all prying eyes.

'Is that……?' Basch began stepping back from the table.

Hamish blinked as recognition dawned on him as well, 'Well blow me down.'

Still it was Fran whose reaction was the most demonstrative. Stoical to a fault and never one to be swayed by emotion, both Hamish and Basch were therefore quite taken aback when the Viera began to laugh.

As the low, melodious sound tickled the air and faded like the tinkle of bells, Fran reached out one long clawed hand to touch the object within. Reacting to her presence a pale, diffuse white light drifted up from within the box to bathe her face.

Fran smiled, 'A pirate's greatest treasure is an escape from certain death; known it I should, that Balthier would have such a reprieve from seemingly inevitability prepared and waiting should he need it.'

With careful hands she pulled free from the purposely crafted velvet and silk lined insides of the box, the up-rooted, but fully functional Waystone from its resting place. As she palmed the large, solid glowing orb in both hands, a number of papers were revealed within the nest of fine cloth.

Upon retrieving the papers Basch squinted at the pages and began to read, ''If these papers are being read then I will assume that I am either mouldering in my grave or awaiting some manner of unpleasant demise. if it is the former the contents of this chest are of no matter to man or beast, if it is the latter, I shall hope that it is you, Fran, who has found these papers.''

Basch glanced thoughtfully towards the Viera who continued to study the pale orb in her hands with an oddly animated look of amusement and interest. Basch continued with his recital.

''As you can see, I have managed to piece together the inner workings of the Waystone, a matter I am well pleased about (you know how long I have been pondering those devices). I will not waste what is perhaps my last will and testament by explaining in-depth the why's and wherefore's of this breakthrough. Instead I merely request that if I am not dead, but instead trapped somewhere I have no wish to be, that you please take this orb to Nono as he knows what must be done.''

Fran nodded, 'Of course. I see the web of it now.'

'There is more,' Basch warned frowning over the scrawl across the page, 'It appears to have been added more recently,' he looked up at Hamish who merely shrugged.

It was entirely possible that the pirate had snuck in and accessed his own cache at some point in time, and the prospect did not bother Hamish over much. Basch's darkening expression did however attract the attention of both Fran and Hamish.

'Well man, do not keep us in suspense, what does Ffamran say?'

Basch, still frowning suspiciously, read aloud, ''In the event that some ill-affair should befall me and that it should, in some way, touch upon events relating to the war or the late Doctor Cidolfus Demen Bunansa, then I would request that, whatever state of being I may be, either alive or dead, the reader of these words take this box and all within it to the Gran Kiltias Marana upon the summit of Mount Bur-Omisace.''

Fran's ears twitched and some convoluted look passed between Basch and she that Hamish was not privy to. He wondered what damnable complicated mess Ffamran had made for himself that it related to the religious leader of a faith the man had nothing but contempt for.

Fran took the paper from Basch and studied the familiar, messy, hand writing, 'There is a date for this newest amendment.'

'Aye, I saw it,' Basch agreed grimly, 'Tis dated no less than a month after Ashe's defeat of the Kiltias Ascendancy upon the slopes of Mount Bur-Omisace.' Fon Ronsenberg's face creased in distaste and suspicion, 'A month after Balthier made some manner of illicit bargain with Marana to assure that victory.'

'All bargains have a price; I fear that all that has transpired is part of a fate and a plan much larger, even still, than we see.' Fran said softly replacing the orb into its case.

'He would not incur debt from Marana lightly. Reckless he is but not foolish; that he appears to have made some manner of pact with her and would hand over his cache to such as she, troubles me.'

Basch was looking at Fran with some sympathy and Hamish wondered at the relationship between Ffamran's Viera and this other man, 'You make for Bur-Omisace?'

'I do; a sky pirate's partner can do no less than obey the law of the cache.'

Basch shook his head, 'I wonder that he would demonstrate such loyalty to you in turn.'

Hamish chuckled sourly. He knew how committed to Fran Ffamran was and had seen the lengths he would go to, to see her safe. It had been to Hamish that Ffamran had come after the Great War and the first fall of Bahamut, when both he and his Viera were half dead from their injuries; Ffamran had carried Fran's unconscious body in his arms for miles.

'Balthier would not allow such a fate to befall me that I had need of a pirate's cache.' Fran stated with simple conviction that Basch had little choice but to accept as truth inviolate.

'I fear it is due to a similar desire to spare Ashe pain that has lead to his indenture to Marana. I must discover the root of it all.' Fran turned to Hamish who nodded his head sagely.

'Aye; I'll guard the bairns, until their mother or Ffamran comes for them.'

He understood little of what had just been spoken but it bothered the old soldier very little. He had had little enough love for intrigue when a soldier fighting a guerrilla war against the Empire, and he had no use for it at all now he was retired. He would help his friend by minding his legacy of flesh and blood.

Fran nodded, 'Then I go with haste.'

Thus it was that Fran gathered up the cache of the legendary sky pirate Balthier in her arms and left with as little fuss and fanfare as she arrived, Fon Ronsenberg at her heels.

As soon as he was sure that they had gone Hamish sat at his kitchen table and pulled from his homespun doublet the rest of Ffamran's treasure, that which he had not revealed to Fran and Basch.

Upending the sack of irregularly shaped, dull silver coins onto the table top Hamish remembered the words Ffamran had so spoken to him at the time of the twins naming ceremony when he had passed to Hamish yet more illicit treasure of dubious merit to his care.

_Hamish should I time come that Fran, or anyone else, comes seeking my cache, hand over the box but do not give anyone, not even Fran, these coins. In fact, if you can, forget the very existence of this Quidion loot….and do not, ever, take up a coin for use. I have it on high authority that one day I shall have need of these and do not trust any other to have the care of them. _

Hamish, sitting at his table, and listening out for the rambunctious return of Ffamran's off-spring, returned the coins to the coins to their velvet bag with a disconcerted frown.

He sighed, 'Ffamran, lad, I hope that you know what you are doing, for I fear that your sharp mind and reckless spirit will soon be your death.'


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter Twenty-four: Listening to every breath you take**

Vaan could now add another fairly useful fact to the list of things he now knew but wished he'd known beforehand; that fact being that Quickening chains, cast by Mist poisoned monarch's, could neutralise the effects of Mist depleting implosions.

In the immediate aftermath of the silent detonation of whatever it was that had come like a tear in the fabric of reality and tried to suck the very essence of life from the marrow of his bones, Vaan wiped blood and white dust from his face and looked about him dazedly.

On the one hand, he conceded, everything had gone precisely to plan. Ashe was back with her people (not particularly healthy...if she hadn't already been choked full of Mist before the implosion they would all likely be dead, and as it was she was going to be sick for days to come) the villain who captured her was dead (and in pieces busily digesting in twenty or so Baknamy stomachs) and no one who stormed the Fortress was dead...yet.

Crawling across the atomised waste littering what was left of the chamber (and Vaan simply did not know how it was that three of the walls and the ceiling should have been completely vaporised but everyone inside had survived) he came up on Private Velan who was packing Filo's chest wound with Phoenix Down's (Magick was impossible when Mist did not exist here anymore).

Filo was more dead than alive, but while she still had some blood in her veins and breath in her body Vaan would not leave her; the truth was he would not leave her even if there was nothing left to save.

Filo must live. This was simply a law inviolate in the realms of reality according to Vaan.

Velan had propped Filo up against a fragment of the last remaining wall of the chamber, which had once been the outer wall; the inside corridor where Mayhew had fallen and much of the interior of the Fortress had simply been rendered onto dust by the force of whatever Mayhew had released when he died.

Vaan did not care about that. He did not care about Mist, Nethicite, Nabudis, cryst-shards or anything other than the girl propped up against a half-fallen wall, face unnatural pale due in part to a patina of the same white dust that covered them all and partly due to blood loss.

Not interfering with Velan's medic duties Vaan gently palmed Filo's lolling chin and began to try and brush dust from her vibrant hair and clean off her face. Filo liked to be clean and well-presented and he would not have her dirty.

It occurred to Vaan as he brushed a thumb gently across her eyelashes, resting like feathered shadow against her cheeks, that he had known Filo her entire life. He remembered the family she had grown up in and lost far too early. He knew all about her, all the details from cradle until now.

Filo's story was not a complicated one, nor perhaps, hugely exciting or interesting but Vaan could not care less. He could hear that tale of yet another plucky Rabanastran war orphan who made good under the rule of Gloriana Ashelia, one hundred thousand times and always, always, manage a smile from the heart.

Because a story didn't have to be exciting and a person didn't have to be the centre of huge events to be worthy of their own tale; everyone had a story to tell and yes, maybe, he could predict every word that came out of Filo's mouth, and maybe he already knew everything about her, but that didn't matter.

It didn't matter because even if he could read Filo like an old, familiar storybook, the sort Heios read all the time, well that was fine, because Hume's weren't books and Filo wasn't always going to be the Filo that was so desperate to prove she wasn't scared she tried to become a sky pirate and fought fiends while balanced on a floating piece of wood.

Filo today was not the Filo of tomorrow and even if no one else bothered to see that Vaan did, and he would be damned thrice over if he was going to see her story cut short before she'd had her chance to shine.

'Captain?'

Velan's voice held the tentative hush of a person giving the Last Rites to the dead, or someone fighting back their own grief. Vaan did not look at him because he already knew what he was going to say.

Every last one of their supply of Phoenix Downs was now packed into a lumpy makeshift bandage pressed against Filo's chest and still, although her breath wheezed wetly out of her mouth and her chest hitched with shallow intakes of air, it was only a matter of time.

Filo clung on to life by a thread and that thread was breaking.

Without another word Velan rose to his feet and passed by his Captain to go where the rest of the men tended to their Queen. It wasn't cowardice, instead it was a good man and a good soldier allowing his Captain a chance to say goodbye in peace.

Vaan shifted on the dust coated ground and slipped his arm around Filo's shoulders, carefully positioning himself against the wall so that Filo would be more comfortable with her head against his shoulder.

With his free hand Vaan took up one of Filo's tiny hands (like a child's – still just like a little girl's hands) her knuckles were raw and oozing from where she had thrown punches like a street brawler and tried to claw her way across the floor in one last ditch effort to be a hero.

Filo wanted so badly to be a hero; she had always hated being the victim.

'Filo?'

And something wrenched and twisted inside of Vaan. Something that hadn't torn like this since the day Reks died.

'Filo I'm waiting. I'm waiting for you to say something, Fi, because this time I'm listening...really listening and you're not saying a word.'

Dust fell like a veil of white and grey down upon their heads and Vaan growled in annoyance when once again Filo's face was covered in the stuff. Filo hated to be dirty, she worked so hard to be bright and clean and sparkly.

It was so eerily quiet and still. The Necrohol held its breath and even the Banshee in the swamps remained silent, waiting to see if they would soon gain a sister.

A broken trail of blood stretched across the floor in dribs and drabs where Velan had carried Filo to this patch of solid support in a chamber that was more memory than reality.

As Vaan stared at that snaking, broken, trail of blood he noted that the surface of that liquid vein of life's essence spilled was marred and congested with a coating of dirty, dull grey dust.

Fury ignited in his breastbone as he saw that even her blood had been sullied by this place. Vibrant, simple, honest, and brave Filo, who always wanted to be more than she was or had any need to be, was laid low and rendered no more than dust because of other peoples mistakes.

None of this was Filo's fault, she did not even understand it; it was not fair that she should die in someone else's tragedy. She was just a bit-part player in a story that was bigger than her and it seemed more wrong and more hideous than anything Vaan had ever witnessed that Filo should die now, for no reason whatsoever.

'Come _on,' _Vaan gritted out between this teeth, 'Filo, _say_ something. Tell me you're sorry for messing things up. Say it so that I can tell you that you didn't do anything wrong.'

Filo's breath hitched, caught in her chest like a bird fighting for freedom and lodged there, Vaan stopped breathing, refusing to steal air from her lungs. Her tiny hand, limp and forlorn in his, was growing cold. Vaan shifted again so that he could hold both her hands in his and rub them, 'Fi, are you cold, is that it?'

He rubbed her hands together and the sound of cracked and calloused palms scraping against one another seemed far too loud as he waited for her to exhale, 'Is this better Filo? Are you warmer now?'

As a child Filo had never wanted to be a princess, or a fine lady, when she grew-up. Filo's ambition had simply been to be 'good enough'. Vaan had asked her once, years ago when she had come to him, not as a friend but as a potential new recruit for the Dalmascan Knights, what it was that she wanted to be so good at and she had said:

_I don't know; I just want to feel good enough. It doesn't even matter if I'm never the best at anything...it will be alright if I'm just good enough._

Whatever it was inside of Vaan that twisted like a corkscrew through the soft tissue of his soul, continued to wind into his flesh and blood and spirit as Filo won her fight for yet another shallow breath. For just a second he thought he saw her lips move, he thought that little gasp of breath came with words and a message.

'Filo? Filo I can't,' he swallowed and lowered his ear to towards her lips, trying not to gag as the raw outhouse stink of blood and iron from her wound overwhelmed him, 'I can't hear you. Say it again Filo. I promise I'll listen harder this time.'

The bandages packing her chest were already staining with bright spots of crimson; her life blood soaking through three layers of Phoenix Down to reach the gauze. Vaan closed his eyes because he did not want to look on those crimson splotches as they spread brilliant scarlet across the plain, dull white of the bandage.

His eyes sprang open as someone dropped heavily down beside him with a soft exclamation of pain. Without a word Ashe uncorked a bottle of Elixir and gently cupped Filo's chin, deftly squeezing the skin to force her lips to part.

'I'll pour and you rub her throat to get a swallowing reflex.'

Ashe told him precisely despite the pinched pain around the black recessed holes that had once been her eyes and the splotching blemishes in purple and black that denoted advanced Mist poisoning that marred her flesh, 'No soldier of the crown shall die under my watch.'

The Elixir filled Filo's mouth like water into a bowl and spilled uselessly over the edges of her lips as Vaan's attempts to stimulate a swallowing reflex had no effect. Ashe swore and withdrew the bottle, checking the bandaging. She looked at Vaan with shadowed eyes as her fingers came away brightly smeared with scarlet, 'You have packed the wound with Phoenix Down already?'

Vaan, who was rhythmically, repeatedly, almost mechanically, stroking Filo's bushy fringe of hair off her forehead could only nod mutely. Ashe bit her lip and looked upon Filo's face.

'Has she woken at all?'

'No,' and the word did not even sound like it came from a Hume's throat as Vaan struggled against the excruciating pain in his chest; a feeling as though he was being made hollow from the inside outward.

'Are you talking to her?'

Ashe rested her hand on his forearm and gently squeezed, 'Vaan you have been talking to her, haven't you?'

He nodded, 'I keep asking her to say something,' he swallowed, eyes closed tightly once more, as his fingers winnowed through the messy thicket of auburn hair, fiercely brushing it clear of all the accumulated filth.

'She's always saying I never listen to her and now I'm listening and she's not talking.'

Ashe shifted closer to him and rested her forehead against his shoulder, a gesture of affection and solidarity that she had never made before, 'She is talking Vaan. Filo is talking to you. She is saying that she wants to live with every single breath.'

Vaan opened his eyes and looked at Ashe as she drew back to meet his wild gaze, 'How do you know?'

Ashe smiled faintly but there was no mirth in that reflex only a quiet type of pain, 'For the same reason you do, but have forgotten, because I've buried too many loved ones before. Don't make Filo yet another name to be added to the Walk of Heroes Vaan.'

Vaan's arms closed reflexively about Filo's small frame as her wet, ragged, faint breaths struggled on and the bandages seeped blood.

'_How?' _he rasped, as short of breath as Filo, 'There's no magick Ashe. No one here can summon magick because all the Mist was taken from us! The potions aren't working and Filo...Filo is...'

Ashe reached across him so that she could take Vaan by both shoulders, forcing him to look from Filo's pale, smeared face, to hers, 'Filo is holding on. Filo is fighting to impress her Captain, just like always.'

The Queen of Dalmasca rapt out in a voice of fire and ice, 'You said you are trying to listen to her Vaan – then tell me, why is that you can't hear what she is telling you?'

'Wha-Huh? I don't...?'

Ashe shook her head angrily, 'Why are men such fools? Vaan – Filo is fighting for you, just like she always does, for your praise, for your attention, and the least you can do, is listen to her now.'

'But she isn't saying...?'

Vaan did not get to finish as a ringing slap about the face gave him a confused view of the broken outer wall of the Fortress before a fierce burning pain suffused across the surface of his cheek. Vaan had no time to wonder what had happened before Ashe had roughly turned his head back to face her.

'_She is talking to you now!' _

Ashe snarled at him, 'Every breath Vaan; every breath she takes when any other Hume would have died by now, is Filo telling you she is still here, still fighting, and still trying to be good enough for you to notice her, and if you don't stop whining and pay attention I swear I'll behead you myself.'

Vaan jerked his head away and stared down at Filo's dirty face. His hand resting on the top of her head shook as finally he heard what she had been trying to tell him all along.

_...good enough... it will be alright if I'm just good enough...one day...for you._

The first sob wrenched free the rest and Vaan used the tears gathered on his fingertips to wash Filo's face as he gathered her up in his arms and rocked her back and forth.

'But you are,' he whispered into her hair as he felt through his own chest the struggling of her breathing and the faltering of her heart still fighting, still beating, right next to his.

'Filo is fine as she is; she was always good enough. I never needed impressing, because Filo is Filo and I like it like that.'

Ashe allowed him what time she could before she brushed a hand against his shoulder, 'Vaan? We cannot stay here. The men tell me the Baknamy that survived follow you? We must all leave here; a Mistless atmosphere is as dangerous as too much Mist.'

'But Filo...?'

'Comes with us,' Ashe nodded eyes resolute, 'No matter what, I promise you, we'll bring her home, but we cannot afford to stay here any longer.'

Vaan pulled Filo back from his body so that he could look into her face, study the familiar contours of that face and the tracks of his tears that had created liquid runnels through the patina of dust covering her bright, rounded cheeks.

She would never make it back to Rabanastre alive; it would be too painful, too cruel to try and carry her across the marshlands and the scent of her blood would attract fiends. The Baknamy that survived might be willing to let her stay in their encampment, but Vaan did not think she would even survive the journey there, and his men, and Ashe herself, were too injured already to put up much fight if surrounded by fiends.

Vaan looked into Ashe's eyes and knew that she knew this. He also knew that she meant every word, she would fight to bring Filo home and, as her Knight he could not let her do that. Filo would never want this to happen; she would hate to be a hindrance to rest of 'the men'.

In his arms Filo continued to fight for every breath but she could give him no more because she had already given him enough...she had given him everything she had. It had been Vaan who had not been quite good enough for her.

He bowed his and closed his eyes once more, bending to kiss Filo's brow, 'No Ashe, no.'

He shook his head and looked up at her slowly, 'You should get going. The Baknamy know the best routes back to the Feywood. I'll...I'll just stay here a little longer...just a little while.'

Ashe opened her mouth as if to argue and then pursed her lips, face twisting with a different sort of pain than purely physical. She nodded her head and rose to her feet.

'Neither your Queen, nor your garrison, will leave without you. We will wait for you.'

She said in muted but firm tones before limping away to give orders to the rest of the troops and the Baknamy (who despite trying to kill her in the palace were now cowed into subservience by the living presence of the Dynast Queen).

Vaan did not look back as they trooped away, all his attention was rooted to Filo, where it had so seldom been before.

Filo breathed, he listened, and time passed as it always did. Filo breathed in and then out and the dust settled. Vaan listened to the silence and the rattle of her breathing.

_...good enough... it will be alright if I'm just good enough...one day...for you._

And presently more tears fell as he listened to every breath she took and knew that as good as she was, Filo wasn't going to open those jade eyes and complain that there was dirt in her hair or ask why he was crying.

She wasn't going to because even though it was wrong and wasn't fair life wasn't about whether or not a person was _good enough._ If it was good people would live forever.

Filo breathed out...and then stopped, the sigh leaving her chest in a rattle as Vaan threw back his head and screamed for her.

The sound of an irregularly shaped, dull silver coin scudding across the dust and rubble was lost in the echoes of one man's breaking heart and the dull thud of Dalmasca's second garrison crowding into the broken chamber.

Green and white light, like a bolt from above, cascaded around Filo's body and Vaan let go of her in shock as magick, wielded by a master, crackled to life in a place that had been dead as dust.

Vaan wrenched his gaze away from Filo's glowing form in confusion and found himself staring up at a woman he knew very well indeed; her arms held aloft, a Mages staff in one hand as she twirled in place, half dance and half incantation.

Filo's body convulsed on the ground as Magick permeated the cells of her body and forced life into places where death had made itself at home.

'Hold her Vaan; we don't have long before my magick runs out. We have to get her out of here.'

Dalmascan soldiers, men who knew and had trained with Filo and Vaan both, swarmed forward with a bier to carry Filo aloft. Shakily Vaan lowered her onto the bed and followed, almost tripping over his heels, as it was carried away.

Across the other side of Filo's bier Vaan met the eyes of his best friend, 'Penelo?'

'Airborne Scouts from Archadia, flying over the Feywood saw the...the..._whatever_ it was that did this and contacted Larsa. I came as soon as he told me.'

She told him as she whispered more incantations and Filo..._Filo_ began to stir and flutter her eyelids. Vaan groped for her hand and squeezed it as Filo's green eyes struggled to focus '...Vaan?'

It took three tries for him to find the words to answer, or the breath to speak them, 'It's me Fi.'

She tried to sit up and both Vaan and Penelo pushed her back down, 'Did...did we win?'

Vaan cast a swift glance over to Penelo who, wiping at her own tears, nodded her head just once, but it was enough. It was all he needed to know; Filo would live.

Vaan grinned and returned his attention to where it was needed, 'Yes, Fi, _you _won.'

As they clattered out of the collapsed Fortress Vaan saw that Penelo had marshalled a small army, and a number of small airships (under the guise of Ashe) to come to the rescue and that Ashe had assumed her rightful command of her troops once more.

However she immediately espied Vaan, Penelo and Filo her brows rising in question that was answered when Filo lifted one hand dazedly towards her head, wriggling in the bier as other healers took over healing duties from Penelo, whose magick had been sapped by the Mistless atmosphere of Nabudis fortress already.

Filo turned confused green eyes to him, as she had done a thousand times before and he had never appreciated the fact.

'Vaan my hair is all dirty...why is my hair dirty?'

Vaan laughed and simply dropped his head down upon Filo's shoulder as the bier was momentarily laid upon the ground.

Penelo, standing unseen on the other side of the bier simply smiled and stepped away, knowing that as much as she loved both Vaan and Filo dearly, her place was not now with them.

Vaan clasped Filo's hand, the one fussing with her hair, and pressed it to his lips. He closed his eyes and said silent thank you to Penelo for saving Filo (the rival she never knew she had) and also just saying thank you. Because he had discovered at a moment when all had seemingly failed him, that sometimes, just sometimes, being good _was_ enough.

Sometimes, just sometimes, despite everything, the good did not have to die.

* * *

_A/N: Hi! I'm on holiday/vacation from my day job all this week, so aside from, y'know, doing stuff in the real world, I'm probably going to be updating quite often over the next few days...just as a warning to you all ;)_

_P.S:...I made myself cry writing this one...I think I might have melodrama/angst poisoning now!_


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter Twenty-Five: Cid's legacy; a son betrayed**

_A/N: To everyone who is reading and reviewing, as always much thanks and gratitude to you all and welcome to the biggest, most continuity shaking plot-twist I have ever inflicted on you, my long-suffering readers ;)_

* * *

He was not completely sure when his tormentors ran out of sadistic inspiration and left him in peace and in truth it did not really matter; he was just glad of the peace and quiet.

As it was Professor Kry had yet to request an audience with him and so, with little to do but gather dust and mildew sitting in his dark, musty, overly hot walled up cell, Balthier did something he was rather good at...he made plans.

These plans were not the elaborate, complex, devious schemes for a heroic escape and revenge upon his captors that might have been expected, or deemed appropriate, considering his predicament; instead Balthier ignored his current lack of liberty and his precarious state of health and assumed that in some way or other he would soon be free once more.

Thus the plans he made involved a much deserved holiday.

He had been toying with the notion of packing Ashe and children into the Strahl and flying over to a little purveema he knew of, which had some truly lovely scenery and a number of freshwater lakes. Sitting in his cramped and confined quarters (the subjugation to total surrender had had the effect of gaining Basch his freedom and Balthier out of his chains...so altogether not such a bad thing so far) Balthier amused himself with forming an itinerary of activities and entertainments for this imaginary holiday.

Of course extracting the queen from her kingdom, even for a few days, was not going to be an easy matter but Balthier was confident in his ability to persuade Ashe, and the children would love every minute of it.

He indulged his mind in happy distraction for a few more minutes (or hours...he had lost all sense of time) knowing that as holistically invigorating as it was to raise his thoughts above his rank and unpleasant state and circumstance, he would soon need to face reality once more.

Balthier shifted, raising one knee up to his chest and folding his arms over it, as he propped his chin upon said knee. As he thought his fingers began to dig into the tight stitching of the knee of his old, worn leather trousers and the thickened patch of treated leather that acted as knee guard.

During his confinement, and especially since Basch had left and he had time to think in peaceful solitude, Balthier had had the time to reflect on recent events in some detail and had drawn a number of conclusions.

There was something wrong with him.

This was the fundamental and primary revelation that had been sneaking up upon him ever since he had briefly foresworn his memory (the irony of the situation being that he could remember everything he had said and felt during that brief period when he had forgotten all). The disturbing point of it was that when without his memory Balthier had felt, ironically enough, more himself than he had prior to, and immediately after, his spell of amnesia.

Thus on careful consideration he had to concede that the rankling suspicion that had motivated him to do something so seemingly moronic as walk into a trap that could rob of him of his wits had been right on the Gil.

There was something wrong with his mind and there had been for some time.

His musing on a holiday was not entirely the idle distraction it seemed but a piece in a puzzle that had been before him all along but for some reason he had persistently put the pieces together in the wrong order.

Why had he waited so long to take his wife and children on a holiday he knew he had been planning for sometime...why was it that although he had planned to take the twins to the Phon Coast to show them the ocean for the first time upon the advent of their fourth birthday he had not done so?

Balthier was a man who always achieved his wants and desires, even when seemingly insurmountable odds stood before him, now, arguable one of the most influential men in all Ivalice, very little could stand before him and his desires and yet, what had he _done_ with his life for the last year, or two years?

The answer was, essentially, dishearteningly, staggeringly little.

Oh, he had the Nalbina aerodrome restoration and the Inventor's Guild he was helping to establish, and the Guild of Moggle Artificers, which he was now benefactor of (a goal he had cherished since his boyhood, to be the first Hume benefactor and member of the vaulted Moogle organisation) but it now seemed to Balthier that he had been in a state of ennui, or inertia, for some time.

Ennui and inertia were not native states to his being; if he was unhappy he tended to either do something about or run away from the problem (or occasional both). Thus the only conclusion that could logically be drawn was that, either he had become old before his time, or (and he liked this one more) something within his mind but not _of_ his mind had exerted a detrimental effect upon him and stolen his old passion.

Although it took some work and his nails broke and cracked, he finally managed to break apart the seam over his knee and slipped his fingers between the rough pad of protective leather covering the rest of the trouser over his knee; his fingers brushed against the two coins he kept in there for just such occasions as this.

The light was poor and Balthier's eyesight was not what it once was (bloody hereditary short-sightedness – he would soon need spectacles to pilot the Strahl) but he did not need to see the faces on these coins for he had designed them and knew precisely what they were...the missing Quidion of Betrayal and Mind.

Eleven years ago when he had hit upon the notion of manufacturing a bone-fide sky pirate legend it had occurred to him that said legend would gain credence and validity if some of the cache were to be 'missing'. However he nevertheless had the whole set of twenty six coins, or two sets of thirteen Quidion, made at the same time as at some point, he had decided, it might be necessary to 'discover' the full set.

One set of Quidion, with all thirteen coins present and accountable, he had hidden and eventually (when he believed it unlikely anyone would believe he had made the whole thing up) entrusted to Hamish' care.

The other coins, or the incomplete set, had already been distributed amongst his peers, and Balthier had found himself entrusted with the coin of Artifice (which was more apropos than Rikken could ever know). Because it would have been expected of a scurvy knave such as he, Balthier had then had yet another copy of the Artifice coin made, which he had given to Ashe before venturing to Archades.

(Sometimes the lengths he went to in the name of raging paranoia disturbed even him, but then something like this happened and he discovered that one could never be paranoid enough.)

Mind and Betrayal, the 'missing coins', Balthier had sewn into his favourite pair of travelling trousers (and repeated the process many times over the years as his trousers needed replacing); in fact he had had them kicking about, hidden in his shin guard, so long he had all but forgotten the reason he put them in their in the first place.

Paranoia; the paranoia of a man who ran and ran some more to escape the manipulations of a father he worshipped, and the fear that he could fall victim to the same, from another source in the future.

Everything Balthier was and had ever done sprang from that hot, red, jagged fear of being used...of becoming no more than a tool in the machinations and ambitions of others.

He had killed to prevent anyone from using him for any reason; he had lied and deceived, and yes, become the user of others and everything he despised, to make damned sure no one could ever, ever again, turn him into something he hated.

Turning the coins over in his palm again and again, Balthier was forced to face the real and genuine fear that sat like a stale vomit in the back of his throat and roiled his gut like gall stones, that he _had_ been used; that his mind and his actions had not been his own, and perhaps not for some time.

Basch had called him a traitor, had declared that he had betrayed Ashe by protecting his father's work...Balthier knew he was right and the monstrous part of it was, that he no longer remembered why he had acted in such a way; it made no sense, almost as if something else had made him do it.

Mind and Betrayal the one intrinsically linked to the other. I think therefore I can be deceived, the great fragility of ego. Balthier sometimes thought that he could drive himself quite stark raving bonkers all the times he tried to plot against finding himself betrayed or manipulated...because how could one ever truly _know_ it was happening until it was already too late?

Still, Balthier shook himself, beginning to toss the two coins from hand to hand in the dark. He had done everything he could to, essentially, sabotage himself. The gods alone knew that a fool trusts his friends and the truly wise man trusts no one, especially himself.

Balthier had absolutely no plan for escaping the Pharos (and he must be fool indeed, placing his faith for continued existence in the hands of the ever capable Fran and the less than friendly Basch). He did not really know how to handle Kry, and suspected that if Kry had brought him here to kill him then Balthier would have little viable option other than to do just that, but that was not the battle Balthier was fighting right now.

He had accepted, about the time he had first held his son and daughter in his arms that he would, at some unspecified point in time, die. Strangely, holding Heios and Hallie in his arms, and rocking them to sleep, he had found that death, while hardly something to be viewed with a smile, was not so bad...his lasting legacy was warm and perfect in his arms.

Dying at the hands of a man like Kry would be galling to his ego (but, Balthier was forced to concede, his ego probably deserved it) but ultimate there was a certain beauty and symmetry to dying in the place his father had, sacrificed in place of Cid.

No, what threatened to send him spiralling into a cataclysm of terror was the idea that something..._other_...had played him like a fiddle to lead him to his slaughter. There was something wrong with his mind, he knew this because he had sensed it for years, a gnawing canker in the dreams he could not remember when he woke.

He curled his fist tightly around the two coins; he knew how to evoke their joint power, all deceptions revealed, all that was locked in his mind released, yet he hesitated to do so.

It was not fear, because truly he feared suspecting but not knowing far more than finding the truth at last. Instead he simply wanted to take a moment to consider his lot; to accept a punishment he no doubt had earned.

In the hot, close, silent darkness of the walled up cell, the air rank with the scent of his own over ripe body (he would forgo dignity and ego for a nice bath about now) Balthier pictured the faces of his children and cast his mind upon a course that he knew was untainted by whatever poison had infected his reason.

He was a selfish bastard and a habitual manipulator and deceiver, he would declare that proudly and unashamed (for what good would false shame do when it had ever been his choice to so sully himself with constant plotting and paranoia?) but he had but one saving grace...he knew how to love.

He loved his family. He loved Ashe, he loved Hallie and he loved Heios. He loved Fran (soulmate, best friend, the debt he owed to her was only equal to the things he would give onto her if he could). He believed, because a man has to have a little faith, that he could never be induced to betray them.

With the delicate brush strokes and gilded touch of affectionate memory Balthier recreated out of the darkness and filth that surrounded him the face of his Queen. He saw her frowning, he saw her sleeping, and he saw her laughing, joyously and without restraint, on their wedding day.

He remembered the separate occasions of the twins' first words, and all he had learned of the people they would be. He remembered that both his bonny children had resisted the cliché of 'mama' or 'papa' and instead defined themselves as intellects to be reckoned with on their first utterance.

Hallie had spoken one day while building a castle out of painted wooden blocks under her mother's careful supervision as he read a book in a wing chair and covertly watched them both.

After abruptly and seemingly meaninglessly demolishing her brick palace Hallie had slapped her own chest and proudly, with utmost authority, piped up with 'Hawwie!'

Balthier remembered that he'd dropped his book in surprise and Ashe had just blinked as Hallie, clearly unimpressed with their response, had repeated the process of slapping her chest and once more declared herself, 'Hawwie'.

Heios, by contrast had had little inclination to proclaim his name and assert his presence with his first word, which came some time after Hallie had discovered all manner of verbal commands and demands.

One day Heios had been in the company of his mother and father while they entertained the visiting Empress of Archadia. Penelo had gone to greet Heios and with simple, quiet solemnity Heios had said, quite perfectly: 'Hello.'

Balthier had made himself promise never to forget, or underestimate, the importance of those memories. He cherished them daily, and so long as he could die with those in mind he would die knowing his life had not been entirely ill-spent or in vain.

With his children's first words, and a thousand snapshots of their growing, enshrined within the backdrop of his mind Balthier clenched his fist around those two coins until the rounded edges gouged into his flesh and blood, sharp and hot, dripped from his clenched fist.

He had to go deeper, further back in mind and memory, to find the place where the rot set in. He no longer trusted himself or his reason, but no manipulation, no matter how well done, could break him swiftly (if he could defy his father he could defy the will of anyone – this he knew).

As carefully, but forcefully, as he had peeled back the secret panel in his clothes Balthier peeled the protective covering from his mind and unleashed that coruscating, tumultuous maelstrom that was his own personal abyss of memory.

The abyss yawned open and a hundred million petty hurts that he had inflicted on others or suffered at the hands of his foes, swirled into shimmering life, stabbing at him with renewed vigour now that he allowed himself to feel them.

He remembered the little boy he had been, sheltered and home schooled until his tenth year when his father enrolled him in the Akademy. He remembered the schoolyard beatings he received because he was too wealthy, too clever, too well-dressed and most of all too _different _from the other children.

He remembered the coldness, the indifference, and disdain he had learned while enduring (and keeping secret from a father who would view his victimisation as a fault in him) those beatings.

He learned to hate people then and he learned that he did not need friends. He did not really need anyone, save those people he could use for his own purposes or buy with false flattery and promises that were not worth the breath he used to make them.

As he fell more deeply into the nasty, fetid depths of his secret mind, Balthier found Fran once more, who erased almost all the lessons of his previous life simply with her presence. Fran taught him that he might not need a friend, but he much preferred to have one and a better person he was in the having.

She taught him, by acquiescing to participate in his mad schemes that he could be good, almost noble, and it didn't have to be a lie.

Balthier was both surprised and not to find Ashe's likeness here in the abyss as well. The mother of his children she had demanded his fealty, paid for it, and then, once the bargain was concluded, refused to play by his rules; so now he played by hers.

He had long since given up any notion that he resented her for all she had given him (and all the pointlessness of his existence she had robbed him of) and he could not really imagine a time when he would look elsewhere for a bed partner. Still as much as he knew that Ashe was at the heart of the matter (because if any external force could enter his mind and change his will, it was she) he knew that Ashe herself was not the answer.

He needed to go deeper.

As his blood dripped from his sweaty, stinging palm and he squeezed his eyes closed so that the weak darkness of the cell could not alleviate the black rainbow colours of his mental abyss, Balthier used his free hand to reach for his feet (scabrous and gaining infection where his bare burned soles had been forced to tread dirty floor) without hesitation, for what was pain but an indulgence of the flesh? He dug his fingers into those open sores.

His descent to the very depths of the abyss increased as a surge of fresh, clean, bright pain, a blue-white sword of agony, lanced through him and increased his velocity.

He knew where he needed to go.

'Cid, you bastard, where are you?'

A memory opened like a lotus flower, bitter sweet, and tinted with half-remembered mania and delusion. Archades after his rescue from Ashe's insane cousin Joaquin, burning up with fever from his chest wound.

He remembered, vaguely, in that way of hallucination, where colours are too bright and sounds too soft and stilted, arguing with Ashe (scratch that, he remembered being a total bastard to her, but alas, that was not unique). Yet something else had happened that made this memory more than just a source of shame...

His father...no, not his father, but an apparition of Dr Cid (and he always made the distinction. Dr Cid, as he had been at his death, was a different beast to the man who had shaped and defined Ffamran's youth) had come to him, speaking words that had been forgotten except within the abyss, words that only had relevance in retrospect.

_Ffamran, we shall need Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca if we are to progress with our plans for Nabudis. We cannot have you upsetting the young queen with a case of the pre-marriage jitters, now, can we?_

Cold sweat hit the air as it coated Balthier's body, while his mind furiously ripped itself apart to find a truth more dangerous than any of his lies.

Mind otherwise engaged his body was free to react to the stress of what he did to himself. Muscles went into spasm and his breathing became harsh and short. He shook as he hunched his shoulders and wrapped his arms around himself.

'Nonononononononono,' it was a mantra that went unheard as Balthier tore himself apart, segment by segment, memory by memory, rooting out the truth, trying to find the puppet master who had so masterfully taken up his strings and jerked and pulled until he no longer knew himself.

How many times had he dreamed or imagined Dr Cid? How many times had he heard that hale and hearty voice booming in the quiet, unprotected places of his mind? How long had a ghost wearing Cid's visage haunted him?

From one bitter memory to the outer depths of all that he kept hidden even from himself did Balthier leap, blind and unprepared.

He was falling through the years and like the sedimentary striations within mountains, and the rings of great trees, he saw himself in all his guises until he found his feet somewhere he had not expected to be ever again.

'_Must I do everything myself?'_

_And Fran was once more half-buried under smouldering, twisted wreckage as the Bahamut, determined to make final communion with the desert floor, groaned and rocked itself to pieces on its descent, and the Princess screamed his name through a wall of static._

_Heaving the metal girder off Fran he blanched to see the damage done her. Bone protruded from her lower leg and when he touched her hip she shuddered in a reflex of pain that stole the breath from her scream. _

_He lifted her as carefully as he could and began to move as swiftly as he was able towards the higher reaches of the sky fortress, where there might be some small chance of surviving the impact once Bahamut came to its final resting place. _

_He could no longer hear the Princess' screams and did not know if this was because the transmission feed had broken or if she had simply given up; he supposed it did not precisely matter. _

_Most of the personnel he met as he staggered through the fortress were either dead, dying, or puddles of panic on the floor and thus proved neither to be of assistance or hindrance. _

_Resting Fran, as carefully as he could, mindful of her shattered body, against a wall somewhere in the mid-level of the Bahamut, where he predicted they would have most chance of surviving, Balthier set about prying loss the wall panels. The Bahamut had an inner and outer hull, and the walls were hollow to allow Mist conducts to run like arteries through the structure (he had gathered that along the way to meet Vayne) he and Fran could ride out the crash inside the walls._

_He tore apart his hands and fingers to some less than pleasant degree while he was trying to tear off the wall panel, but as this was considerably less significant than either Fran's suffering, or that which they would face should they be unsheltered when Bahamut hit rock bottom, Balthier was not overly concerned._

_He was thus unprepared and more than a little shocked when, for no practical reason, a dangly vein of Mist cable dropped, with the slithering grace of something alive, to loop about his neck. _

_Jolted and startled Balthier reached up with bloodied hands to pull the cord off him and it was at that moment that the blasted thing discharged its semi gaseous, semi-liquid, white hot fuel all over his hands. _

_Balthier screamed as acid heat burned through flesh and tendon and muscle to corrode the bones in his hands. _

_As he collapsed, hands held against his chest, and mind blank to all else but the excruciating, corrosive agony lighting up his entire being, his eyes (and the part of his mind that saw everything even while he slept) recorded the truth that his conscious mind would never remember._

_The Mist was not Mist, or at least not entirely, and the burning, scorching, acid-like substance that leached through eroded pores and seared into his nervous system was not merely fuel. _

_Just briefly before the absorption (the infection) was complete an inhume like mirage shimmered palely into existence. An almost triangular shaped thing with no head and no neck and no visible face, a solid shard of nightmare, roped and eradiated with pale lights, seemed to look down upon the suffering Balthier with something like distant satisfaction. _

'_Undying; from the father to the son I will go.'_

Balthier woke from his dream-like discovery white skinned and bloodless, coated in ice and sweat. Bile rose to his throat and he lurched forward to void the content of his stomach (not that there was all that much within). Gagging and choking on harsh, liquid burning panic, Balthier's mind floundered and was rendered to pieces on the rocks of the abyss.

He could not see in the darkness but he stared down at his hands all the same; seeing in his mind's eye the faded rosette pink and white splotches of those old burns with new understanding and new horror.

He had known something was wrong.

He had known something was wrong with _him_; when he had held his children he had first sensed that something in him could taint them.

Thus he had given the coins to Hamish. He had kept secret, even from Fran, his discovery of the workings of the Waystone, and more recently, he had even endeavoured to lose his memory in the hopes of dislodging the interloper within his thoughts.

Finally when all else failed and he began to see how he had been made to betray himself and all he believed (for how else could he explain gathering the sun Cryst shards, stealing his father's research papers; guarding Dr Cid's most heinous crimes from discovery?) he had given his trust to a man who disliked him because whom else could he trust to watch him when he no longer trusted himself?

All this he had done, almost subconsciously, because he knew he was being used; he knew that something was wrong...but he had never imagined...not _that..._never, never...not like father...

The darkness of the cell was shattered and parted by eldritch, pale and sickly lights, and a scent like burning Mist and tin clogged the already over-pungent air. Gritting his teeth against either tears of fright or screams of murderous rage Balthier lifted his head to meet the blind regard of his faceless puppet master:

'So it was you all along..._Venat_.'


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter Twenty-six: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy**

Contrary to the scurrilous rumours one arrogant ex-sky pirate enjoyed propagating Fran and Basch were not, and had never been, lovers. This however did nothing to diminish the high esteem Basch held the Viera in.

Sitting across from Fran as she piloted her airship over the snow-capped peaks of Kerwon towards the seat of Kiltia Basch let himself consider the woman beside him. It was a mystery, both profound and delightful, to him why such a self-sufficient, self-contained and mysterious woman should favour him with friendship.

'Fran, would you tell me your thoughts?'

He asked her breaking a companionable silence that had lasted most of the sixteen hour journey from Landis to the southern continent. He shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat as the gut wound he had received in Balfonheim twinged.

Fran's eyes cut to his sharply, 'Your wound pains you still?'

Basch shook his head and waved off her concern with a peaceable smile, 'Ghost pains; I am perhaps too old to be fighting.'

In Ivalice in this new era of relative peace five and forty years was neither old nor young and Basch did not over much mourn the threads of silver growing into his clipped beard or the laughter lines growing entrenched around his eyes. Still there were times, just as he imagined there are for many a fighting man when he wished for a different life.

Watching Ashe with her children playing games with ball and bat, or teaching them to ride a Chocobo, Basch regretted that life had never afforded him opportunity to find a wife, and have children of his own – or perhaps it was not fate but his own choices that had denied him?

Noah had always said that Honour and Duty were jealous and harsh mistresses; his brother had been right. Those twin callings had left Basch knowing that he would die without heir or issue to remember him.

Fran was watching him from the corner of her eye as she guided the ship over the crests of mountains towards a snow covered valley where they could set down and depart for Bur-Omisace.

'You humes have a saying: age is but a number. The longer I stay among you the more I come to see the wisdom therein.'

Basch smiled at her, 'You are troubled Fran. Do you not trust Balthier to know his own mind?'

It was a barbed question; Basch did not pretend to understand the bond between Balthier and Fran anymore than he would deny its seemingly unbreakable intensity but he also suspected that strain had been placed upon that bond over recent years.

'And you persist in asking questions when answer you have already.' Fran replied in the same mild tones, 'dear as he is to me I would be fool to trust Balthier to his own devices. He has never known his own mind – thus I do love him.' Fran murmured not offended but amused by Basch's subtle probing.

Many a time Basch had mused that the connection between Fran and Balthier appeared almost maternal on Fran's part. Oft times her companionship seemed to nurture the ex-pirate and provide him with moral guidance (something he was sorely in need of, more oft than not) other times Basch was forced to give Balthier himself more credit and say that the man, braggart he may be, provided, without skimping, love and support unconditional to Fran as well.

'I cast no aspersions, Fran. In truth Balthier endured much and risked much to barter my freedom, while as I may suspect his motives I do not condemn the man wholly either. I am merely concerned for it seems to me that you are concerned.'

Fran was silent for a few moments as they made their descent and landing. Even after as they dressed in clothing appropriate for the trek up the slopes of Bur-Omisace Fran refrained from answering; this did not bother Basch, for silence was not his enemy. If Fran had no will to continue then he would not press.

'Know you how he and I came to meet?'

Fran spoke into the snow-flecked wind as they tread carefully over the Silver Floe towards the ascending slopes of the mountain; the peak shrouded in vapour and snow flurry.

'No,' Basch conceded, 'I heard some vague snippet of story from Vaan that it had something to do with a slave auction and a riot?'

Fran almost smiled, 'I was prize lot in said auction and he was of the audience, though no willing participant.'

Basch glanced at her sharply and near lost his footing on a patch of black ice. Fran easily reached out to steady him and he accepted that hand with gratitude, 'I cannot imagine that you would be so easily caught in such a way.'

Basch had often wondered that Fran was so content to remain merely former partner to a former pirate; an ethereal figure in the story of others, of consequence but ill-defined, her own motives lost in favour of the voices of others. To him she was a vital and engaging companion, a friend in silence and conversation, who granted him the great honour of actively seeking his opinion on all manner of things.

She nodded, 'Near fifty years I had exiled myself from Viera and Green Way,' Fran's hair flowed out from behind her back like a pennant, twisting and dancing with the snow as she led the way, 'And him not yet twenty summers alive and full of his own self-important youth.' A smile touched her lips in memory.

Basch chuckled drily, 'Aye, I can well imagine.'

'It was accident that I fell into the weave of his story at the moment of its beginning,' Fran said, 'I was but a husk...a dry shell with nothing but the echo of the Wood within my hollow. Why care I if Humes would sell me as chattel? Fran was Viera no more and of no consequence.'

They had reached the first fork in the path ascending the mountain and Basch noted vaguely (without much interest but with the practice of honed instinct) that there were no wolves stalking the snow quilted slopes in packs of twos and threes, nor the rattle of skeletal remains to denote the activation of cursed bones.

'I think I would not know the Fran you speak of. That you could be so apathetic seems nigh impossible to comprehend. You have done much for Ivalice Fran, and are of great consequence to many.'

Fran stopped and turned to face Basch, 'Because of him. I am what you now know because he saw in me what he had never had and seized upon the making of a friend. That I may walk proud, though I be Viera no more and lost to my birth purpose, is because he gave me new purpose.'

Basch was silent as they continued once more to dredge through heavy snow. The whistling wind grew sharper and the bite of ice slush fiercer upon the exposed portions of their faces as they moved steadily upwards.

Basch said nothing in response to Fran's candour. There was no need for he knew of what she spoke and he knew what it was to live in, and for, the service of others.

First it had been to Landis that fell and left him destitute, a sword without a purpose to be thus used. Then had come Raminas of Dalmasca, and that had ended in betrayal and ignominy. Onwards then to Ashe, wherein redemption was found by the extension of his sword and shield to her plight, and onwards once more to the memory of his brother and the Lord Larsa; each new service and each new charge had given him something even as it took from him his liberty and the chance to be a man of and for himself.

'Aye,' Basch muttered finally bowing down to the Hume need to verbalise. He spoke into the rising gale, 'but surely you cannot feel that you have failed him?'

That was what he sensed in Fran and saw his suspicion borne out when she hunched her shoulders against a sudden blast of frigid air that careened down the slope towards them. Her ears twitched.

'When Viera lose the voice of the Wood, barren they become. Outside of nature and against nature they stand. Viera away from Wood are alike the dead leaves fallen from branches and blown hither and thither in the winds.'

Basch, who had been walking a step behind Fran the entire time, now stepped up to her side.

Had he not been entertaining similar thoughts but moments earlier; had he not been considering the woe of never having a son of his own to hold? Did Fran hold similar pain within her also?

It was with chagrin that he realised that he had never given any thought to Fran's situation. So different she was, and so immensely strong, that it had not occurred to him that she might have such feelings. Still, Fran would not share such intimate information without there being a purpose or relevance in the telling.

It came to Basch suddenly, 'Nay, but you have watched _his_ children grow. They love you and know you and thus you are tied to their growing indelibly.'

It had been a treasure to Basch to be named gods-father to the twins, and one that he had not felt he deserved when Ashe had informed him of his sacred duty, and that Fran would be named gods-mother in turn.

To him such a token had been the final impetus to lay off the guilt that he had failed Raminas in Nalbina (a guilt that had persisted in his heart long after he had been exonerated in court of law and the court of Ashe's conscience) to Fran, he began to see, it meant more – and suddenly he was forced to give respect to Balthier for what he had done.

'When I left Eruyt I had want to know what Hume life was. I had want to nurture humes, and impart some knowledge, as Viera nurture the Green Way, yet I knew not how, your ways were strange to me and I was stranger still to Humes.'

'And Balthier knew of this, and so he made you gods-mother to his own children, entrusting their care to you should he and Ashe be stricken, and thus you may nurture them as you had wished.'

Fran nodded, 'But I have failed in the bargain, for he no longer trusts me.'

Basch frowned as the shadow of the walls of the Kiltia palace encroached upon their ascent and cast a pale of imposing darkness across the snow.

'What do you think is afoot, Fran? You do not go to the Pharos, though I believe that Balthier is in need of aid in the immediacy.'

'I know not, but I fear much for him. There is something wrong and I sense that he does not want immediate rescue, but instead for me to know what is at the root of this trouble.'

They stopped before the permanently open gates of Bur-Omisace where the snow fell away to gritty, cold sands and the Moogle Gurdy kept her pen of Chocobo's through sun or blizzard. Basch's weathered eye could still make out the pock-marks on the thick walls of the Kiltia enclave; scars of both the Imperial massacre of nine years past and the lunacy of Mishman Margrace of Rozzaria.

'And you think that Marana would know more than you, the workings of Balthier's mind? Fran the man is a born atheist and an iconoclast of the highest order. The notion that he would make confession to the Scion of Faram seems far-fetched in the extreme.'

Fran almost smiled as she walked calmly past the sparse collection of petitioners and pilgrims that huddled against the cold just outside the walled solitude of the holy place of Faram's chosen (numbers of the devoted had been dropping since the rise and fall of Mishman's Kiltia Ascendency, many ordinary people had grown disillusioned with religion).

'Who better for atheist and iconoclast to confide in than the enemy of his philosophy? The man who disdains friendship must make confession to his enemies, must he not?'

Basch found himself wondering, not for the first or the last time, what manner of madness passed for thought in Balthier's mind – and found himself entertaining the notion of pity for the self-aggrandising pirate much as he had done as he watched the man suffer at the hands of dead allies.

Balthier may infuriate and confuse Basch but Basch had one advantage over the other man. Should Balthier annoy him too greatly Basch could merely walk away – Balthier, by contrast, was trapped with himself until his dying day and that was a punishment Basch would not wish upon his most heinous enemy.

Their approach up the split-level walkways and steps to the grand doors of the palace of Kiltia, shrine to Faram, was unmolested and untroubled by another living soul and Basch could not help but wonder if they would find the interior of the temple completely deserted.

When they reached the grand golden doors leading to the Gran Kiltias audience chamber they found them to be stood open and snow melt had made the polished floor tiles wet and treacherous.

The sounds of raised voices had them both quickening their pace towards one of the doors leading to the small ante-chambers extending from the main chamber.

'Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh yes...history in the hands of man, but where be the future?...the mortal eye is inversely blind, looking only back and ne'er forward...It is all so pretty a picture that I have dreamed. Yet like it I do not.'

Basch had never met in person the Gran Kiltias Marana, though he had heard that she was but a young girl and quite a departure in temperament, age, and intention to that of old and venerated Anastasis.

What he saw terrorising the two harried Kiltia Priestesses within the small ante-chamber did not resemble either a young girl or a holy figure, in fact adequate description or explanation was denied him. All Basch could do was stare.

'From the father to the son goes the legacy, and me thinks he know now...but what shall he do?'

A feminine form, though too tall and too gaunt to be called a woman and too old in the face to be a coltish child, swathed in the gold and blue of High Kiltia, stood perched atop a ceremonial alter brandishing what looked like a knife fashioned from a shard of orange glass in a bleeding hand.

'I walk awake and can dream no more...'tis a pity, for I see only confusion and long for the dreams of other men; my god has feet of clay and the pretenders no feet at all...'tis pity, all such a pretty, pretty picture.'

As Basch advanced into the room he noticed that the stained glass window behind the alter had been smashed via a thrown urn and that the woman-creature in her blood smattered robes stood bare foot on a carpet of shattered glass shards, deliberately stamping them into powder.

The two Kiltias tried, with strained deference, to entice the girl down and Basch felt his stomach plummet as he realised that this deranged Helgas must be the Gran Kiltias.

'A Bath...a Bath...I am all bloody...and look you on my cuffs; soiled beyond redemption!'

The Helgas threw back her head and as she did so her stream of cream white braided hair (a shade too pale to be blonde but infused with too much golden shadow to be as pale as Fran's) whipped against her narrow back as if in self-flagellation.

Basch was moving forward before he considered the propriety of the actions, watching as the woman-child-priestling lifted the hem of her robes and began to jump up and down on the layer of broken glass. Drops and splatters of blood from her mutilated feet leapt into the air and spattered over the white alter cloth.

Basch reached out and grabbed hold of the bony, rail thin body, unceremoniously hoisting her from her perch and carrying the quite suddenly silent and placid form over to her abandoned throne in the main chamber. The two attendants, caught between relief and horror that a mere mortal should so manhandle the Gran Kiltias, followed after in a daze.

Fran, who remembered Marana from four years past, simply leaned against a pillar and watched the clairvoyant dream-mage with steady gaze.

'Ooooooh, so it is the Knight and the Partner who come,' Marana tilted her hatchet sharp chin upwards to regard Basch with cataract filmed eyes that appeared blind but saw everything. Quite suddenly Basch found himself eye to eye with the very sharp point of the orange glass shard.

'Don't blink now, good sir Knight, you wouldn't want to lose an eye!'

Basch jerked back but found that Marana moved with him grabbing his shoulder so she could hold the very point of the shard a hairsbreadth from his eyeball. Basch grew immediately still and struggled with the blinking reflex as his eye began to water.

'My god has feet of clay; thus I do not dishonour myself in giving him homage. In his image I grow and I have no will to see Occuria weave once more.'

The click of Fran's heels denoted her approach as she moved forward, 'Occuria? You would speak of them once more?'

Thin lips split into a sharp toothed smile and a sickeningly sweet girlish giggle was emitted from between those savage teeth, 'Know you what this knife is, Viera?'

Basch, unable to move or even blink, nevertheless sensed Fran stiffen in recognition, 'Nethicite. The scent of Mist and burning poisons the air around it.'

'Sun-Cryst deifected Nethicite; the son has been industrious and diligent, though he know not the nature of his endeavours. All muddled up he was betwixt and between the father, the son, and the unholy ghost!'

Marana let go of Basch abruptly and danced away from her throne. With bleeding feet she began to pirouette around and around like a Rozzarian whirling dervish.

Gyrating and bouncing like an over-excited infant, or an obscene parody of such, Marana skipped over to an incense brazier that hung low from a wall sconce, a small open flame heating the oil from below. As she reached it she turned back and grinned impishly at Basch and Fran.

'No!'

Basch realised what the deranged seer was intending to do too late by far to stop her. Heedless of her physical pain she shoved both hands into the naked flame and hot oils.

Basch once again raced across the chamber and pulled her away, as her two useless attendants (who were used to this sort of performance) and Fran merely watched.

Marana hung limply in Basch's arms, all bones and sharp angles, 'My hands...my hands are burned...yet the oil does to me much less harm than was wrought on he whose fate you would know.'

Fran stepped forward once more, 'You speak of Balthier?' Fran looked from Marana's reddened fingers and palms to the brazier and then to Basch.

'Balthier's hands were burned severely aboard Bahamut that first time. She made allusion to her cuffs before; a veiled reference not to her attire but to Balthier also?'

Marana jerked free from Basch and went to kneel by the open door of her chambers and pressed her palms into the melting snow building up in the threshold.

'Viera are no fun to prophesise.' Marana's sharp and gaunt face could not hold onto the girlish pout she attempted to convey, 'You see little but hear much...or at least those who have walked from the Wood do.'

Fran shifted her weight from one leg to the other and cocked a hip, 'Then it was not in vain to come here; know you something of Balthier's present circumstance?'

Marana smiled sharply once more and jumped to her feet. Basch watched, vaguely sickened, as the emaciated and bleeding woman-child skittered across the chamber and towards her desecrated alter once more.

'_Circumstance_ and _Present_ are of no matter. He is better in the knowing than he was in the deception, and soon he will come to me, as I a-dreamed it be, and beg upon folded knee for me to reveal the dreams he remembers not.'

Fran seemed to relax as Basch looked from her to Marana with lack of comprehension, 'Then the leading man does not retire from the tale? It is not his will to die...as I had feared he might so plan?'

Basch was jolted by the realisation that Fran suspected that Balthier had, in some way or form, engineered his captivity as a precursor to elaborate suicide.

'Fran?'

What manner of ill-deed and circumstance was this that Fran would suspect such a thing and that Basch, who had spent days strung up in a tight and near airless room with Balthier, might see just the grain of possible truth to this seeming unfounded suspicion?

Basch frowned in consternation. He had been confused and bewildered by Balthier's erratic behaviours of late and no more so than during their captivity. There had been something in Balthier's demeanour that had seemed almost impatient to advance his captivity; an impatience to surrender unto his fate.

Yet what was the truth of Fran's fear that such a selfish man, with so much to live for, would wilfully throw it all away? There was more to this than Basch knew (or wished to know, truth be told).

Marana cocked her head to the side and regarded Fran gravely. In her countenance the coquettish and mad child slipped away and the prophetess and worthy successor to Anastasis revealed herself for the first time.

'I am woman who lives in dreams. I am woman who sees tomorrow, when any clever soul may see that tomorrow is a fallacy. All that is, is what _is_. The future is a construct of the mind, just as is the passing time. A complex lie we tell to keep chaos at bay. I am mad for I see what is not and I am great for I see what could be.'

In the quiet that followed that almost bitter claim Marana raised her hands over her head, still holding the Cyrst shard, much as a dancer would and rose on the points of her toes. She gave one slow, solemn pirouette.

'Once I did grant the Dynast Queen true prophecy, which she in her wisdom disregarded. I shall tell it to you, yes I shall, and see what you shall say of it.'

Marana smiled and let her eyelids droop closed as she flopped bonelessly onto the floor of her chamber, asleep or in trance. They heard her bell-like voice in their minds.

_I see a city of the dead rising and the natural order reversed. I have seen Golmore Jungle to Balfonheim come. I have seen airships underwater swim and fish too large for the ocean float through clouds. I see a boy and a girl, with destiny unwritten and the Occuria in their tomb. Mehaps I see the dreams of dreams. Mehaps I see tomorrow. Mehaps I see Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, a widow evermore._

Basch twitched to hear what sounded to be prophecy of Balthier's demise and tidings both strange and disturbing. At his side Fran had grown very, very still.

'Ashe was widow when she married for a second time; the advent of new union does not alter the original state. Widowed she is, and evermore will be, of her original betrothed.'

Marana clapped her hands delightedly as her cloudy blind eyes popped open, 'Very good!' she giggled, 'Most people do not see so clearly through the words to the truth therein.'

'Then you do not speak of Balthier's demise; he is as like as not to outlive his queen?' Fran persisted, seemingly pondering Marana's prophecy as she spoke.

Marana shrugged one bony shoulder, 'If a man can think he can choose the mastery of his own demise. It is impossible to say when a man shall die by misadventure, ill-health, or choice.'

'Nethicite in your hands and Balthier his father's work has done,' Fran stared beyond the chamber and beyond Marana. Basch had the feeling that she sought to see as far afield as the Ridorana.

'He goes against his life's calling and betrays his own future, all the while he dogs his own steps with misdirection and keeps secrets of secrets kept.'

Marana smiled slyly, 'Who better to stand upon the shoulders of the would-be gods? Undying is not boast of the boastful, but fact of the present. Loose threads and untied knots leave a son with a legacy not of his choosing and the heretic with task left undone.'

There was a moment of absolute stillness that Basch bore witness to. Therein it seemed to him that Fran and Marana held back a single breath in separate lungs, the one seeking more and the other withholding final revelation. The very air quivered with elusive truth. Basch found himself feeling like a child in a room of adults, or a man in a foreign realm where he knows not the language. In short he felt profoundly foolish and ignorant. It was then that Fran blinked and the moment passed.

All of a sudden, before Basch could draw breath to question, Fran broke and ran; turning from the chamber and running as fast as her long legs would take her.

'Fran...!' Basch made to follow her but Marana's sudden surge of motion stopped him more completely than her simultaneous casting of a spell of immobilisation.

'To Dalmasca is our road, good sir Knight.'

Marana stepped before him. Frozen as if congealed in iced honey, Basch could do nothing but watch Fran's flight.

'The weave was torn but not undone. Undying have patience but the acts of ill-informed mortal men within the barren ground of Nabudis has created an in-balance. A weapon has been forged that threaten even the Undying – and in the Dynast Queen's hands, by default, it has fallen.'

Marana leaned in towards Basch and he could look nowhere but her milky, filmed and blinded eyes, 'All I have spoken comes to pass; the fish shall fly and those that fly shall swim. The natural, unnatural shall become.'

Her ghastly skeletal visage split into macabre grin, 'Alack, alack, the Occuria shall walk the lands. There will be a reckoning to come!'

* * *

_A/N: Hello everyone...shameless insert of another OC from a past story (I just like the mad Marana...sorry!). This chapter is a bit talky but I promise lots of explosions and variable chaos to come...as the prophecy indicates I'm about to blast this plot wide open!...Oooh, I'm all evilly excited...must go and lie down now. ;0 _


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter Twenty-Seven: Confluence and Culmination Part 1**

_Son this is foolishness. Ignoring a problem does not make it any less a problem._

A Mist constructed white kid-skin boot tapped upon the filthy floor of his cell and the ghostly eldritch visage shed its own glow about the squalor.

Balthier, knees drawn up to his body and fingers pressed into a steeple under his chin, continued to do as he had for the last umpteen number of hours since discovering his hereditary mental parasite, and ignored the thing before him.

_The situation has worsened; there is time no more to dally. Make your escape while you may._

Balthier did not so much as flick a glance towards the illusionary man pacing the floor before him with his hands fastened behind his back.

_Gerun will show you no mercy. You will be expunged from the weave of hume history should he get his way. Make haste son and run! _

From somewhere elsewhere in the Pharos Balthier thought he heard something and cocked his head and straightened his spine to listen; yes….there it was again. Feet scuffing upon stone, a grunt of pain, and then something that sounded very like the unmistakable click of rapier point heels cracking across worn marble.

The unreal Cid had stopped pacing also and moved towards the façade wall to poke his translucent, intangible head and shoulders through the wall to peek outside. Balthier shifted in his uncharacteristic slouch and waited.

Cid (or Venat – or construct of encroaching complete psychotic collapse – it mattered not) pulled back from the wall and grinned at him.

_You have the luck and felicity of a scoundrel. Perhaps we will both escape Gerun's clutches after all._

Balthier almost addressed the figment with some manner of snide put-down but stopped himself at the last moment and snapped his jaws together resolutely. A split second later the façade wall imploded in a shower of brick dust and fragments and the body of a man came to a bouncing, decidedly unconscious, stop before him.

As he stared down at the man blankly the stolen Quidion of Artifice rolled from his loose fist and Rikken's form rippled like water as the illusion collapsed and large black man with obscenely bulging muscles emerged.

'Balthier – I have found you.'

With a wryly quirked eyebrow Balthier looked up at the backlit silhouette of a tall, svelte woman with long, elegant ears.

'Oh and who might you be?'

The Viera form twitched her ears and stopped halfway between breaching the threshold, 'Know me not, Balthier?'

Smiling and trying not wince against the harsh grey light she had let in with her he raised one hand to shade his eyes and regarded her calmly, 'There has been a worrisome number of incidences of identity thefts of late. You may look like someone I know but that does not make it so.'

The Viera cocked her head to the side and wrinkled her nose as her eyes flicked over him from head to foot – she hesitated to see the state of his feet and then met his eyes once more.

'Then I may ask the same of you.'

The possible Fran murmured reddish eyes fixed upon his with unusual intensity, 'Who are you? Are you pirate, prince or pauper? Are you man or puppet; do you serve yourself or other masters?'

Balthier sighed and resisted the desire to close his eyes for he suspected he'd struggle to open them again.

'I'll be damned if I know; it has been an exceedingly bad week.'

His possible rescuer stepped carefully into the cell but could not resist twitching her sensitive nose at the smell (Balthier himself had become inured to the stench – though his pride twinged a little to imagine how awful the reek must truly be – still at least a portion of it was Basch's fault. The other man had shared this squalid hole with him for days at least).

'Indeed it must be so for ne'er have I seen you wallow within filth and do nought to rise above it.'

Balthier tensed as his pride was stung and then deliberately forced himself not to react to the transparent attempt to court a reaction in him, 'I shall not talk to imposters who insult me. Either get on with whatever depravity you have come to inflict or leave me be.'

He turned his face away and made no attempt to try and make a break for the open door wherein the figment of Cid stood within the threshold brandishing a fob watch with some annoyance. The woman shook her head in annoyance and made to reach for him.

'Let go!'

He recoiled and slunk further into his personal sty. He could not trust his own eyes and he could not trust his own reason therefore Balthier had resolved to do absolutely nothing until such time as he was either rescued or died of starvation. He was not even sure which he would prefer. The latter came with fewer complications, though he had heard it was a protracted and uncomfortable way to die.

'Foolish Hume,' long clawed, large hands curled about the crown of his head and turned his face towards her own shifting to clasp his cheeks in unbreakable grip.

'Rumours and ill-tidings have I heard; told I have been that the leading man has fallen and in his steps Cid's shadow walks anew. Will you tell if this be so?'

'I am no one's shadow!'

A surge of hot pride and fear-tinged anger infused his tired, apathetic limbs. He shoved from her grasp and rose, tottering, to his feet. The figment of Cid, already scanning the passageway beyond his filthy cell, glanced back and raised one ironic brow.

_That remains to be seen, my boy. Though you will be little more than dust under the heels of Gerun's tyranny if you do not depart at once. Off, off, you had best be off._

Balthier blinked at the figment of Cid and then, realising that he was listening to the thing, he jerked his head away and found himself skewered upon Fran's quizzical regard. She shook her head sadly.

'How long? For how long has Occuria poison in your ear fallen and I have known and sensed it not?'

Balthier frowned, 'Hmm?' realisation dawned and the mere notion that Fran, if it was Fran (and that seemed increasingly likely) could give up on his autonomy sanity so easily forced him to speak in his own defence – though in doing so he confessed to the problem.

'I am not a pawn of Occuria. I didn't even know the bloody thing was there until some time in the last twenty-four hours,' time having escaped him along with a vast number of his most treasured self-delusions; princely among the belief that he did not have to become his father.

Though he had known that something was not right with him for sometime (or at least his dangerously overactive subconscious had done) Balthier had rather suspected that he had simply lost his wits in the more traditional manner.

Alas, much like congenital heart conditions and short-sightedness, it seemed possession by Occuria was a Bunansa family trait to be passed down through the generations. Balthier shook his head sharply of such thoughts and narrowed his eyes at Fran mutinously.

'And if you are truly Fran then I am less than impressed with your faith in me.' He accused mulishly feeling the need to spread his displeasure around.

The tiniest flicker of a smile touched her lips as she tugged on his arm and slung it about her shoulders, 'Is it so? Then it is well and the leading man is not yet fallen to ignominy.'

Biting back a groan of pain as Fran half helped him and half hauled him bodily to his feet Balthier warmed to the notion that this was more than like the real Fran and thus the prospect of freedom (and a nice, long soak in a big warm bath) became more than a false hope to torture his mind.

'I would not be in this ignominious state had it not been for your tardiness. A partner should endeavour to rescue their comrade at quicker rate. I have been here days Fran, what kept you?'

He complained as he clung to Fran like a particularly unsavoury smelling barnacle and struggled not to whimper every time his burned, cut, and infected feet smacked against the cold stone and his legs refused to take his weight.

'When last did you eat?'

Fran ignored his complaints much as she always did, but she could not ignore the visible effect of days of enforced starvation.

Balthier blinked and gave this question some thought as his shrunken stomach uncoiled from where it had flattened itself against his spine and twisted upon itself with hunger.

'Hmm, I believe I was given some water the day they released Basch; as to food then that is dependent on how long I have been here.'

'Some eight days by Basch's reckoning.'

Balthier was jolted by that statement as Fran propped him up against a wall (and he promptly lost his own balance and slipped down it to end up slumped in a heap on the floor). He had not eaten in nearly ten days, nor had a sip of water in close to three – by rights he should be dead, surely?

The figment of Cid chuckled as he came back around the corridor a phantom rifle gun bouncing on his shoulder.

_No need to thank me, my boy; like it or not your fate and mine are one, and have been since Bahamut fell. I guard your flesh as if it were my own. _

Balthier flinched and almost growled, 'Shut up old man.'

The figment of Cid grinned as Balthier's expression became almost comically twisted upon realisation of his mistake in addressing the creature at all – let alone as if he believed it really was his father's ghost.

Fran had been rooting about in the heavy knapsack he had not realised (busy with his delusions and general misery) that she had been carrying upon her back. She now paused to hear him speak to empty air and looked about her for some trace of the Occuria she now knew was somewhere close.

'Old man?'

He shrugged uncomfortably, 'My father. For years I thought it just odd dreams or the phantoms of fever and distress.' He closed his eyes, 'Perhaps I even wanted it to be him in some way – but I swear I never suspected……'

Fran nodded, 'And in that unspoken longing a weakness to be exploited.' into his hands she pressed a hideskin flask, 'take but small sips, too much at once will sicken you.'

He was so tired and weak that the liquid filled flask seemed impossibly heavy to raise to his lips and the mundane task of sipping the concoction of potion and water mixed with Elixir and milk (as vile as it sounded but surprisingly fortifying) took up all his attention.

Once he could ingest no more Balthier drifted almost involuntarily into a thin slumber, unable to stay awake now that the pain of his stomach eating itself was not distraction enough to keep him conscious.

He surfaced from faint slumber to the disparate sensations of a harried voice in his ear and the gentle brush of cloth against his benighted feet. He blinked his eyes open to see Fran whispering healing incantations over his feet while cleaning the wounds with gauze from her pack.

_By all you hold sacred Hume arise and depart, for the wheel does turn, and Pharos is Gerun's to control._

The shock of Cid's ghostly face pressed against his ear was made worse in the extreme to hear Venat's alien enunciation strike the over-worked keys of his brain. Balthier shivered and jerked his head away.

Fran looked up at him sharply, watching keenly for some indication of where the invisible Occuria was located.

Balthier cleared his throat awkwardly trying to ignore the Occurian heretic's obvious agitation, as in the guise of Cid, it paced a tight circle at the opening of the passageway they loitered in.

'…..the waystone from the cache?'

Fran nodded and pointed her free hand towards the pack, wherein something large and roundish created a strange curve in the weather proofed fabric, 'Hmm, and Kry? Have you seen him?'

Fran shook her head, as one ear twitched catching a sound that Balthier himself soon heard – it sounded almost like rushing water.

'I have not. Not even fiends prowl the Pharos now. You and the man in Rikken's false guise are all I have seen since entering the Pharos by way of your stone.'

'Hmm,' Balthier's brow twitched as he tried to ignore the fact that the figment of Cid's face had twisted in open fright, 'That….that is not good. I have not seen him either and it seems reasonable that I should expect to see my captor at least once. I still do not even know what he wanted me for to begin with.'

Cid was shaking his head as around them the vague noise of distant running water through pipes grew louder and became something akin to a free flowing, rapid, stream or open brook.

_Tarried to long, the Pharos, construction of Occuria, and none know it better than Gerun. Gerun's trap is now sprung. Run, young fool, run!_

'Fran!'

She grabbed his arms and hauled him up, 'I hear it; water from above and below. I sense Mist where none was before. We must depart.'

They staggered out of the passageway and onto one of the open platform's where the drop-off unfettered plunged down several hundred feet and where the many, many, tiers of staircases in the Pharos rose and ascended in twisted spirals.

Fran pulled free the waystone and clasped it in her hands. Balthier moved to mimic her stance and start the magick when something in his peripheral vision caused him to drop painfully but swiftly to his knees.

The object, a black blur, shot passed the empty air where once his head and been and hit the far wall of the passage they had just left with a meaty splatter.

Balthier turned to stare as did Fran. He almost moved back to get a better look at the….the….surely that could not be what he thought it was?

'Fran…..I may be half mad already…..but is that not some manner of squid?'

A noise like the twisting of a hundred thousand bed sheets and the swirl of ten dozen sea storms roared through the echoing stillness of the Pharos in answer. From the central hollow, where once a towering spout of upward flowing water coursed and twisted in open defiance of gravity, a funnel of silver and scaled shimmering objects of all shapes and sizes whirled upwards.

'Down!'

Fran knocked him heavily to the ground as the air exploded in a shower of debris that at first he could not identify as his mind refused to acknowledge the evidence of his own eyes.

The very ocean and all its inhabitants seemed caught in a funnel cloud; a vortex of sea water and living beings swept up from the ocean surrounding the Pharos and thrown into the vacuum of the chamber.

Fish and sea debris from every strata of the ocean, caught in a twisting maelstrom of power, ricocheted from the central hollow to the far corners of the Pharos. Soon the reek of ruptured fish guts and viscera erased even the stench of Balthier's own less than scrupulously clean body.

It took but seconds for the floor they cowered on to be covered in a hail storm of sea urchins, crabs, starfish and other weird and wonderful ocean fauna Balthier did not know the name of.

Had the whole thing not been quite fantastically terrifying (the roar of the maelstrom louder than a thousand Mist explosions and the power of the cyclone's suction enough to make it hard to breathe as he dug his nails into the floor for purchase) it would have been bizarrely amusing.

It looked like the fish were flying.

Still living fish, with thick sinuous bodies, dropped onto the floor and began to writhe and flap upon the stone; many dozens more tumbled down over the drop-off from the platform and were sucked back into the maelstrom once more.

The towering funnel of sea water swirled and reached and seemed to be drawing everything not bolted down across the floor towards its bellow-like suction pull. Fran was trying to belly crawl her way across the platform to where the waystone had begun rolling perilously close to the vacuum beyond the platform's edge.

A scarlet skinned triple horned octopus crashed like a meteor from the ocean floor onto the platform and the creature's tentacles, with suckers the size of a Hume's eyeball, curled about the waystone.

The realisation that the Octopus could steal their means of escape galvanised Balthier into movement (though some very distant and detached part of his mind shuddered at the sublime ridiculousness of it all – to be betrayed by an opportunistic octopus).

Cascades of sea water and broken coral washed over them as he and Fran grappled with the seven foot long Octopus (with strength enough to crush them both in its tentacled grip) that seemed determined to absorb their waystone into its – well, Balthier was not at all sure of the inner workings of an Octopus' anatomy and the point was mute anyway.

The waystone was their only way out and this creature, wherever it came from or however it came to be here, was like any other random fiend or beast of the wild; it was a threat.

They were both still fighting with the Octopus for possession of the waystone as the water, gravity, and the power of the funnel cloud cyclone, dragged up through the hollow of the Pharos from the depths of the ocean, pulled he and Fran to the very brink of the platform's edge.

Fran had poked out one of the Octopus' wide, gelatinous eyes and was trying to tear through the sea creatures many limbs with her sharp nails while Balthier kept two palms on the device and focused his will on a chosen destination. The waystone began to glow as the magick quickened.

A tentacle as wide through the middle as a child's leg lashed across his face and Balthier lost his grip on both octopus and waystone.

As if it had merely been waiting for the opportunity the cyclone seemed to breathe in one great, huge, inhalation and Balthier could not dig his short Hume nails into the slippery, fish guts and sea water dripping, stone floor deep enough to keep from sliding ever closer to the drop.

To compound and complete the great tragic farce his life could sometimes be described as some manner of huge, scaled and silver grey fish, half the size of a man and still thrashing with twice the strength of the average Hume, rolled across the water cascading platform and smashed into his chest. Balthier and the fish rolled over the edge of the drop.

Desperately, as he felt the sheer power of the gale winds and reaching fingers of the cyclone catch at him and pull him towards the screaming heart of the vortex, Balthier stretched out his arms towards Fran wishing he had limbs as sinuous as the bloody octopus.

Fran reached for him, the dead Octopus still coiled about the glowing waystone. The mouth of the cyclone yawned wider and the roar of its hunger denied Fran her voice as she stretched towards him, risking her own fall to save him.

In one moment of sublime understanding, caught between falling and flying, reaching and losing, Balthier's eyes recognised the bright glow of the waystone and saw what Fran, in her desperation, did not. The waystone was active; Fran's escape insured.

Fran jumped, the octopus dangling waystone crooked under one arm and the other reaching for him, trying to ensure that they would both be in the waystone's range when the power finally ignited.

White light, soft and warm as candle flame, flared; a vision of Rabanastre sparked in his mind as the waystone responded to the destination command.

Fran was sailing through the air that resembled the open ocean and then suddenly she was not and Balthier, alone once more, was tumbling through a crush of sea water that rode the waves of air.

Within the blinking of a god's eye he was caught in the heart of the ocean within the hollow of the Pharos.

He could not breathe and he could not see as he was tossed around and about and up and down until such definitions and direction lost all meaning. He was flying in water and swimming in air – and _suffocating_ in both.

Then, just as he felt that he must surely fly apart at the seams, the cyclone collapsed upon itself and several thousand tonnes of ocean life tumbled down all around and upon Balthier.

His last thought, as he fell into the very heart of the Pharos hollow, was that he had never thought he would live to see fish fly.

* * *

_A/N: Hmm, well I said there would be flying fish...and I have delivered. Was this not the strangest 'possible' death scene I've ever written? _


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter Twenty-Eight: Mr Bubbles and the Turning**

_A/N: firstly thank you everyone who is reading and reviewing; we have exceeded the hundred review mark and I am exceedingly grateful to everyone for your enthusiasm and kindness!_

_Secondly, say hello everyone to the second greatest dramatic cliché after Amnesia...the sixth month time jump! ;)_

* * *

Ashe had not slept properly in weeks. There had been no time to sleep and when she tried she was simply reminded of all the things she had not the time to think on during the long days.

It had been six months since the Turning, the name which had been coined by the hundreds of displaced, terrified people from the Archadian south-eastern coast who had lost their homes in the aftermath of the tidal wave that had come on the heels of the Pharos explosion and the activation of the underwater Mist fault-line.

The Turning: the name given to the period of unending chaos that now reigned over Ivalice and had done so ever since the lights went on in Giruvegan.

Mist storms tore apart the usual seasons and created ranging sandstorms across Giza that strangled off the caravan trade to Rabanastre and threatened food shortages once more.

Monstrous three day long lightening storms ravaged Bhujerba and the Confederated Democratic Union of Rozzaria was deluged by flash flooding and mudslides in the mountain regions.

Airship travel was incredibly dangerous when blanket waves of concentrated Mist rippled through the air from Giruvegan to Mount Bur-Omisace and from Kerwon to the spinning cyclone that had once been the Ridorana Pharos, which twisted the Naldoa Ocean into a raging beast of wild surf and crashing waves.

In six short months everything Ashe had worked for the last ten years to achieve had been washed away: the Occuria were back but no one seemed to know what the false gods wanted. They made no demands and did not send any Mist wreathed emissaries to any of the leaders of Ivalice.

It mattered not, however, for once more every living being in Ivalice was being brutally crushed under the heel of vengeful Occuria and the strain threatened to rip asunder the peace and good will Ashe had made it her life's work to ensure.

Rising with the dawn, though the heavy clouds and storm streaked sky made it difficult to tell, Ashe dressed in sombre silence and blinked puffy, dark shadowed and blood shot eyes trying to wake up her numbed and fatigued mind.

She was staring despair in the face but today she must put all that behind her; for today her children were five years old.

As she left her quarters Vaan immediately fell into step (the recent troubles had made it prudent for Ashe to keep her most trusted Knight at her side almost constantly).

'You look tired, Ashe.'

Vaan told her quietly as he gave her a wane smile in greeting. Even Vaan's irrepressible good cheer had taken a hammering since the Pharos tidal wave had heralded the beginning of the Turning.

'I _am_ tired Vaan, but that doesn't really matter, does it?'

She didn't mean to snap, truly, but after four comfortable years when she believed she had finally overcome her hardships it had proved sickening easy to fall back into the uncomfortable armour of spite and sarcasm that had served her so well as a girl of nineteen.

Vaan was unfazed however and merely shrugged, 'It matters, there's just not much we can do about it.'

'How are the children?'

Vaan sighed, 'Hallie had another dream last night. She managed to get hold of a book with pictures of Octopus' and things……Heios swears he didn't give it to her but…'

'Gods damn it.' Ashe swore as she stamped angrily down the darkened corridors of her palace towards the children's nursery. 'This is supposed to be a special day; a happy day. They are five; they should be happy.'

Six months ago, when her Mist poisoning had abated enough and her fever lessened so that she could actually understand Fran's words, Ashe remembered the cold, flat, furious refusal that had filled her like a block of ice in her chest when she had heard of Balthier's seeming demise.

She had refused then to believe he was dead; too often in the past had he done the very same to her and re-appeared with some interesting new scar but vibrantly alive, and she refused to consider herself a widow now.

Thus she had told the children that Balthier would come home. She had made a promise on his behalf, but even so, rumours abounded and the story of Balthier's drowning had reached Hallie and Heios' ears.

For the last month barely two nights past without Hallie waking screaming that the Octopus were after her and that she could hear the water coming; Balthier's 'young lady' sharing his fate in her dreams and screaming for him in the dark and stormy nights.

It chipped away at Ashe, every day and every night when she communicated with Larsa, or Al-Cid, or her Uncle Halim's successor the Marquise Catalina, and tried to enforce some flimsy form of order over the Occurian wrought chaos.

Every day that this chaos continued but Giruvegan remained silent and impenetrable, alight and pulsing from a thousand spires beyond a howling wall of Mist that threatened to corrode the very Jungle of Golmore to ash and slag, doubt and loss and helplessness threatened to destroy her.

'You can't force people to be happy Ashe, even your own children, not when they know things are really bad.' Vaan murmured and Ashe whipped about to stare at him aghast at his betrayal.

'They are my children and I will protect them from any hurt.'

Vaan simply regarded her with worryingly solemn still blue eyes, 'I don't believe he's dead either, Ashe, but Hallie and Heios know you are hurting and that makes them hurt.'

Ashe refused to let her pain show in her countenance. She stared Vaan down and spoke almost coldly.

'One hour for them to smile and laugh, if I can just give them that….' she clenched her fists, 'is that so much to ask?'

Vaan smiled faintly and shook his head, 'No, no it's not,' he managed a broader smile, 'Me and Filo managed to get the Veccara airborne and we caught one in the Salikawood.'

His eyes twinkled and Ashe felt her spirits lift a little but still her lips twitched, 'Only one?'

Vaan shrugged and shuffled his feet as they loitered outside of the closed door to the nursery, 'Most of them have either died because of the wild Mist or gone into hibernation. It took hours just to find this one; but it's a good one.'

Ashe forced herself to smile and placed a hand on his arm, 'Thank you.'

He rubbed the back of his head and still managed to shrug even with his hands at the scruff of his neck, 'I want to see them smile too. Filo thinks _Mr Bubbles_ is a good name. I said that she could bring it in, that alright?'

With Vaan at Ashe's side almost all the hours of the day and night Filo had assumed the role of bodyguard and guardian of the royal twins and their Moogle nannies. She had proved very good at it and Ashe had considered promoting the girl simply on the merits of her childcare abilities.

'That's fine. I remember when I was their age, perhaps a little older, I had one and I still remember how much I loved it. I think I cried for days and refused to leave my room when the creature died.'

She smiled wryly, 'I think I forced my older brothers and Basch, even Vossler, to attend a formal funeral procession for Snuffles.'

Vaan looked just slightly sheepish, 'Um, Penelo had one growing up, a baby one and it was tiny, I remember because that's the reason I sort of _accidentally_ stepped on it. She cried for a week and wouldn't speak to me.'

Ashe felt her lips twisting into a vaguely macabre smile as she imagined the scene. She couldn't help it, she could almost envision a clumsy child Vaan doing something like that to long suffering Penelo's prized pet. She looked down at Vaan's large booted feet, 'I am not surprised, if it had been me I'd have flayed you alive.'

Ashe pushed open the door of the nursery.

* * *

It had taken time to clear a path through the Cerobi Steppe that the hydraulic lifting machines, drawn on Chocobo pulled carriages, could traverse to reach what was left of Balfonheim.

Basch had seen the devastation before but he still found it hard to countenance that the rippling veldt of sea water that swept up to the low plains of the Steppe and stretched out as far as the eye could now see, covered the underwater ruins of Balfonheim completely.

The only sigh that the port had ever existed were the seaweed slimed spears of ship masts striking out from the waters and the very top-most curve of the aerodrome's hangar roof.

Shading his eyes against the glare of the waning sun at his back, Basch strained his vision to look out across the endless, solid stretch, of the ocean to where the dark, lightening striated stain upon the distant horizon was just visible to the naked eye. That stain was all that could be seen of the raging Mist inspired cyclone where once the Pharos stood.

Basch's attention was drawn back to the immediate horizon as Fran steered the flat-bottom small engine boat towards the makeshift shore he stood on. The Bangaa workmen they had hired to assist with the retrieval began to load the heavy machinery borrowed from Draklor onto the back of the boat.

'Do you think it is salvageable?'

He asked Fran once workmen and machinery had been loaded safely onto the flatboat and he stood at her side as she expertly guided the craft over the choppy waters of this newly formed in-land sea.

'Soon we will know.'

Was all she would say and Basch left her to her silence. He had noted that Fran had withdrawn somewhat into herself since the events of the Pharos and the advent of the Turning. He could not say he blamed her but he did wish that she would feel comfortable enough to confide in him a little more.

She must be carrying tremendous pain and guilt within and he, more so than anyone else, knew what it was to such guilt and failure.

The only sounds were the creak of the carcasses of ruined ships lying at the bottom of the seabed and the squall of seabirds as the waves lapped against the sides of the boat.

'So many lives and gone in the blink of an eye.'

He murmured as he looked overboard at the opaque gun-metal grey ocean and imagined the Gallerina marketplace, the Whitecap Tavern, and Reddas' stately former home all many feet under the thick, impenetrable, surface of the waves.

'Many had fled already after the fire.'

'Aye,' Basch murmured, 'Here that might be so, but the wave from the Pharos hit the Phon Coast in many places. They say it spread a hundred miles in all. Many coastal settlements now share a watery grave such as this.'

Fran was silent in response but Basch noted that her hands tightened on the steering wheel of the boat. There had been many survivors of the wave, herald of the Turning, but only Fran had been at the epicentre and seen the true force of the unleashed Mist fault line, which had previously lain dormant under the Pharos for over a thousand years.

Eventually they reached the barnacle covered, mostly submerged, roof of the aerodrome and Fran used a modified harpoon gun to secure a rope from the ship to the metal roof. Now would be the hard task of prying open the roof of the aerodrome to retrieve the precious vessel within.

As Fran and the Bangaa workmen of the reformed and redeemed Draklor went about the business of securing and positioning the machines (and Basch, neither mechanic nor engineer, was left to stand quietly in the boat) he could not help but watch Fran carefully.

It seemed to him that she moved more slowly and with greater care, as if her age, that had always been a strange and untraceable thing, had finally caught up with her. There was a pinched quality to her silences and touch of stiffness to her still fluidic movements. Yet it was not age that dogged her step but grief.

Once more Basch looked out at the distant horizon towards the Pharos maelstrom. To thousands along the Phon Coast that inky stain in a lightening seared sky was a reminder of their loss, an ominous symbol of the Occuria's true power. To Fran it was something more.

The Pharos was a reminder, constant and cruel, of her failure and Balthier's very own bitter memorial.

* * *

Penelo did not like coming to Draklor. Ten years after the days when Dr Cid had ruled over the steel and wires of the sky scraping edifice of Draklor Laboratories, the memories had yet to lose fear's lustre in her mind.

For this reason she followed close on Larsa and Al-Cid's heels as they all moved swiftly through the corridors of Draklor (now a teaching institution as well as a working laboratory –but closed down to all save the three of them on this day) towards the aeronautics bays.

'It seem more den passing strange, eh, dat de Occuria make no demands. If all of dis be because Ashe gain possession of de Anti-Mist engines, and means to counter de power of Occurian Nethicite, why den do they not demand she forfeit such power, eh?'

Larsa paused in the threshold of one of the wide, red and blue veined and patterned elevators of Draklor and waited for Penelo to catch up. He smiled at his wife and Penelo allowed him to gently fold his arm around her waist as he ushered her through into elevator ahead of Al-Cid and himself.

'I cannot begin to postulate an answer, except to say that I fear our assumptions on both the Occuria's power, influence and ultimate agenda are likely false. We believed them impotent after Ashe refused to heed them and we also believed that Venat fell with my brother; neither assumption proved to be the case.'

Al-Cid, President of the Rozzarian Confederate, shook his fringe of dark hair from his glasses shaded eyes and regarded his younger friend shrewdly, 'So you believe what de Gran Kiltias say, eh? Dat Bunansa harboured de Occuria rebel all dese years; t'ink you 'is demise be de part and de parcel of dese cruel times?'

'He is not dead,' Penelo spoke up before she even realised she intended to.

Both men turned to her as the elevator descended the levels of sub-basement to reach the aeronautics bays. Larsa reached and took up her hand, raising it to his lips. Penelo averted her eyes and smiled apologetically.

'Sorry Larsa, Al-Cid, it's just that I agree with Ashe and Vaan. Until I see a body I just can't believe Balthier is dead. I don't think the man even knows _how_ to die and if he is gone,' Penelo absently placed her free hand to her stomach and shook her head, 'The twins are so small still. I guess I don't want to think that they'll never get to see their father again.'

Al-Cid nodded his head deeply in a courtly bow, 'As you wish, my Lady Empress.' He demurred. 'However, if de man be still of de living it is shame dat he, or 'is Occuria, not see fit to make demselves known; no doubt 'e would 'ave much to say of interest about dis _Turning_.'

'Yes,' Larsa agreed as he bowed for Penelo to procede him out of the elevator once it reached its destination, 'that is something I have been thinking on. It seems almost as if Balthier's…….disappearance, in someway precipitated the Turning. It is possible, if Venat was truly within him, and being a known rebel to the other Occuria, that Venat could have made some move to aid us, or prevent the Turning.'

'But it was Professor Kry who imprisoned Balthier; how could the Occuria have known about that or reacted to it, without knowing?'

Penelo interjected as they walked along the quiet subterranean tunnels, faintly lit with ceiling fitted crystal lamps, towards the heavy steel doors that led to the prototype labs.

'Ah, yes, dis former man of Draklor, de instructor of Dr Cid, a man dat not been seen since before de Turning.' Al-Cid chuckled richly and the noise bounced off the thick walls of the narrow tunnel, 'Dis is mystery deeper den my liking. We play in deep waters an' travel wit' no map.'

Larsa reached the end of the corridor and tapped on the keypad lock to open the sealed doors.

'We know that the Mist disturbances are controlled and directed by the two twin poles of the Pharos and Giruvegan. Giruvegan is unreachable by land or air due to the Mist storms, but the Pharos might just be reachable.'

Al-Cid looked from Larsa's carefully mild expression and bright eyes to Penelo who was rubbing her stomach fretfully. She caught Al-Cid's look and managed a wane smile, 'Wait and see what Larsa has built.'

The doors to the prototype labs swished open and Larsa tucked Penelo's arm through his, 'I have done nothing. It is the work and ingenuity of the engineers of Archadia who have created this prototype engine.'

Al-Cid looked curious and tugged off his sun-glasses in the poor light, 'Ah, de reason you invite me 'ere. Dis mysterious invention dat can 'elp wit' de Turning. I am intrigued my friend.'

Larsa smiled, looking almost like a bright-eyed twelve year old once more, 'It was the prophecy of the Gran Kiltias Marana that proved the real inspiration, though Draklor had been researching the possibility for some time.'

'De possibility of what?'

Penelo looked up at Larsa and grinned; he smiled back down on her and nodded. Penelo broke from his hold and moved swiftly across the deserted labs (which looked more like the hangars of an aerodrome than a scientific research area).

Penelo came to a stop before a black painted, sleekly shaped airship, approximately the same size as the Strahl but which was of a more stream-lined design. The vessel looked like an arrowhead made of obsidian.

Standing proudly before the first Draklor prototype airship to be unveiled since the Sky Fortress Bahamut, Penelo held out one arm and spoke proudly, 'President Margrace, this is the Naldoa Dancer, the very first sub-aquatic glossair powered, duel purpose, airship ever designed and built.'

Al-Cid arched an eyebrow and turned towards an equally proud Larsa, 'De Naldoa Dancer?'

'Yes,' Larsa smiled as he went to stand beside Penelo and curled his arm about her waist once more, 'this craft has the capacity to ride both the air and the waves. It can reach a depth of three hundred feet underwater and the altitudes of most military airships. Its speed is greater than any sea or sky vessel currently in existence.'

Al-Cid rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his jaw speculatively, 'I see.'

A smile curled over his lips Penelo stepped up to him with a conspiratorial smile, 'Wait until you see it in action, Al-Cid, _then_ you'll truly believe that an airship can swim.'

Al-Cid stepped forward to touch the hull of the craft, 'How long until she be ship-shape and ready to launch?'

Larsa joined him and brushed his fingers over the paintwork, 'That depends on whether Ambervale's shipyards would be willing to assist. Many of Archadia's ports are still not fully functional after the Pharos wave. If Ambervale is amenable we can start work on a fleet of these craft within a fortnight.'

'Ah, so now I truly see de reason for my invitation, eh?' Al-Cid chuckled, 'What den, my friend, once we 'ave dese swimming airships. Do you intend to lay siege to de Pharos; do you truly t'ink dese ships can pierce de 'eart of de maelstrom?'

Larsa looked at him with serious blue eyes, 'It is not a matter of _can_ we, but merely that we _must_. The Pharos was the start of all this and I truly believe that somewhere within the cyclone we shall find the key to defeating the Occuria.'

* * *

Ashe opened the doors of the nursery and took a deep breath as she did so, 'Happy Birthday children.'

As she stepped into the nursery with Vaan at her heels she was met with two solemn eyed children still in their sleepwear surrounded by a mound of unopened and brightly wrapped gifts. Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty were trying to encourage the children to open their presents but neither seemed interested.

When Ashe entered both children threw themselves into her arms, cheeks dampened with tears.

'You promised mother; you promised father would be home for our birthday.'

Hallie wailed as she buried her tear stained cheek into Ashe's shoulder and Heios rested his brow, dry eyed but monstrously solemn for a child of five, onto her shoulder.

Even though Ashe had been preparing for this moment for the last sixth months, while still hoping that the desperate promise she had made to two desolate children would be upheld by her lost and missing husband, it tore her heart asunder to see the grief and loss upon their faces.

As she looked up over her children's heads to the quiet, whiskered faces of the two Moogles (who owed their employ to Balthier and a debt of friendship besides) and then to Vaan, who glowered down at the floor, Ashe swallowed and gently pulled back from the children so that they would look at her.

'I know and I am so very sorry. I wish he were here too. I miss him very much.'

Hallie wiped her running nose across her arm and stared up at Ashe with large, full eyes that were dark shadowed from sleepless nights. 'Is father dead, Mother, has he left us forever?' she whispered.

Ashe fought down the urge to moan in pain as it felt like her soul shattered into jagged shards to see her vibrant, exuberant darling daughter ask such a sombre, broken hearted question.

Ashe shook her head vigorously, '_No._'

She reached out to stroke one hand down both children's faces. 'Sometimes…..' she swallowed and gathered herself, 'Sometimes when things seem very bad and you don't know an answer, when you don't know what the truth is, you have to close your eyes and look for the truth inside yourself.'

Ashe captured the eyes of her children as Vaan slipped out of the door of the nursery when he heard the sound of Filo's approach. 'Close your eyes now children; that's right, tight closed now.'

When it became certain that Balthier was going to miss his children's fifth birthday (and gods prevent it from being so) maybe every birthday from here-on-in she and Vaan had decided upon a questionable plan of action. One meant to maintain two children's hopes just a little longer – at least until such time as Ashe could not keep inevitability at bay and must accept that Balthier was never coming home again.

'Now children I want you to go deep down inside yourself, as if you are reaching all the way down to the tips of your toes, and I want you to remember what Father sounds like and what he looks like, can you do that?'

Hallie, who worshipped her father, was already snivelling once more but Heios remained serious, his brow furrowed in concentration, as from behind the closed doors of the nursery a slightly distorted voice, with the cut-glass diction of high-born Archadian, rolled through the wood to their ears, melodiously rising and falling in cheerful song.

'Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday dear Hallie and Heios, happy birthday to you,'

The first refrain in the song was barely finished but both children's eyes had popped open and they were fighting each other in the rush to reach the door and tear it open. Ashe took the time to wipe a stray tear from her eyes as she rushed over to the door and pulled it open for them.

'Father!' both children's shrieks of delight were strangled off in confusion as they pounced through the door and found only Vaan (trying to hide the voice modulating communication device behind his back) and Filo standing in the hallway.

'Father?'

Hallie looked about her confusedly as she found no sign of her father. Heios stared straight at Vaan and Filo.

'Captain Vaan, Sergeant Filo, have you seen our father?'

Filo stepped forward her green eyes wide and fey, 'Oh, your highnesses, the strangest thing happened. I was just talking to Vaan and we both thought we heard your father over there,' she pointed to a small ante-chamber of the main hall.

She needed to say no more as both children bolted down the hallway to the ante-chamber. Ashe met Vaan's eyes and silently nodded her thanks as he finally managed to pocket the voice-modulating device.

Holding back her tears she followed the children, Vaan and Filo at her heels.

'It's better this way,' Filo murmured softly, though whether to her or Vaan, Ashe was not sure, 'No matter what, today of all days, they should have hope.'

The sounds of her children's voices risen in surprise and confusion, and maybe a little delight (gods she hoped there was delight – after all this) told Ashe that they had found her 'surprise'.

When she reached the ante-chamber Heios was holding onto a piece of paper and trying to read the writing, sounding out the words with his lips. Hallie, by contrast, had gone straight for the bounty and was staring at the Dreamhare wrinkling its nose and sitting sedately in the very centre of the round, white marble table that usually held a vase of flowers.

'Oh, whatever is this?'

Ashe decided that she had perhaps over egged the pudding with that exclamation of false surprise, but then she had never been a good liar. Still, the children were too caught up with the Dreamhare and the note to notice her over-acting.

'Whoa,' Vaan too was a useless actor but his exclamation was at least more in character, 'where did that come from?'

Ashe moved over to the table and the Dreamhare, with its yellow and gold stroked ears and large, liquid dark eyes, and front paws tucked up against its white bibbed chest as it rose up curiously on hind legs. Filo had managed to affix a big red bow around the creature's neck and Ashe (who had wanted to acquire a Dreamhare for each of the children to avoid squabbles) had to concede that Vaan and Filo had found a fine specimen.

'Look mother there is a note,' Heios hurried over to her brandishing a badly written (forged) note, 'I think it is from father!'

Ashe clapped her hands over her mouth and even as she chided herself for the appalling performance she was smiling as Hallie plucked up the courage to pat the Dreamhare on the head. The placid, cheerful creature wriggled its nose in response and shivered, causing a shimmer of low grade healing magick to sprinkle the air.

'Oooooooh!' Hallie's eyes bulged with excitement and something close to a smile touched her lips.

Heios turned from the magickal bunny to the note and began to sound out the words, 'de-ar…dear child-ren….I am…sor….sorry that I' his brow scrunched up as he struggled to read the words. Ashe crouched down to help him taking a corner of the page in her hand and together they read aloud Vaan's careful forgery.

'Dear children, I am sorry that I cannot see you on your birthday. I would very much like to be with you and no matter what, be assured that I love you both very, very much. I send this note with my good friend Mr Bubbles; please take very good care of my friend while I am away as he is a very special friend of mine and I know you are both big and grown up enough to take excellent care of him. I will be with you very soon, I promise. All my love, your Father. P.S: please give your mother a kiss for me.'

Ashe could barely force herself to get through the reading (she had not known what Vaan would write and the words which transformed her children's solemnity to beaming smiles, dug into her heart and soul like daggers.)

As she succumbed to tears, the false letter crumbling her hands, her children rushed to hug her, and Mr Bubbles, sensing the sadness in the air as a form of pain, shivered once more and sent a sparkle of healing magick through the air.

'Don't cry, mother, father will be home soon. He promised.' Heios whispered in her ear as he gave her a kiss on the cheek just like the letter had said to do.

* * *

Darkness had fallen before the workmen and Fran had managed to prepare the equipment and forced open the rust and salt damaged aerodrome roof. It took a further two hours, by which time the white and ghastly moon hung heavy over the ocean, before the winching ropes and hooks found that which they sought.

In silence at Fran's side, Basch watched as, with agonising slowness, under the single eye of the impassive moon, the spindling arms and taut cables of the hydraulic lifting machines dragged from the watery depths of the aerodrome hangar a very special airship.

In slow, painful increments, the waters of Naldoa released their hold upon the Strahl.

The once beautiful airship, now swathed in seaweed and slime, and crusted with clomps of molluscs and carbuncles, which resembled warts and bruises across the ruined paintwork, rose into the air, captured in the heart of the jaundiced moon and held aloft in the arms of Draklor cranes.

As Basch's eyes adapted to the dark he realised that somehow, perhaps in the violence of the impact as the hundred foot wave crushed Balfonheim, the Strahl had acquired a ten foot wide tear in its hold and one wing hung half-way broken from the Strahl's body. One front glossair engine was lost and the other shattered. The once proud and almost gaudy vessel now looked like a crushed butterfly, falling almost to dust as it was dragged from its liquid tomb.

Basch turned towards Fran as the water streamed like a curtain from the ruptured innards of the ship, 'Can it be salvaged; will she ever fly again?'

He had asked the question before, numerous times, from that point five months ago when Fran had fixed upon dredging the Strahl from the depths until now, when the broken ship that had been her home for many years now hung in tattered pathos under the silver gilt of the moonlight.

For a long moment Fran did not answer but merely stared at, and maybe through, the Strahl's ruin.

'Fly she will,' Fran all but whispered and her whole body seemed to twitch and shiver with a thread of raw emotion that was as powerful in its way as the Pharos Wave that had laid low the Strahl and her captain.

'She will fly,' Fran repeated in firmer voice enforced with the whisper of solid steel conviction, 'There will be no watery grave for the Strahl; or for her captain.'


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Art of Losing and the Price of Victory**

_A/N: I would like to tender an apology. Firstly I cannot write Iambic Pentameter, or any sort of poetry (this will make sense further into the chapter). Secondly I apologise for this manic updating….this story is just going into overdrive and __demanding__ to be written! _

* * *

The rain continued to lash down throughout Rabanastre. The Paling had been taken down because it was essentially a construct of Mist and therefore suspect, and so the monsoon hammered the city relentlessly.

Rain ran in sheets down the mullioned windows of the palace and tore through the wide leaves of palm fronds out in the grounds; distantly the distressed bleating of the palace sheep could just be heard over the torrent.

'How bad is it?'

Pacing back and forth in front of her cabinet table in the main audience chamber Ashe gnawed on her bottom lip and tried to ignore the incessant pounding of the rain.

'The Giza Plains are flooded and the Garif report that the Soghurt has burst its banks in two places along the Ozone Plains; the elder has requested aid, should the rains continue, from Rabanastre to help evacuate the Garif so that they might take shelter within the city.'

Ashe stopped her pacing to stare at Montblanc for a moment, 'I can scarce believe that the Garif would countenance abandoning Jahara.'

Migelo cleared his throat from further down the cabinet table, 'Highness, I have heard stories from traders who managed to get through before the rains washed away the paths, they speak of fiends driven wild by the Mist. They rip themselves apart and fall upon creatures they would not ordinarily dare attack.'

Pursing her lips Ashe nodded. She turned back to Montblanc, 'You may tell the Garif that Rabanastre is at their disposal for any assistance they require.'

Her eyes danced down the table to the newest member of her cabinet, 'Master Eats Fast and Kills Faster, what news of Nabudis?'

The Baknamy sitting on three piled up cushions upon the chair looked up at her with obsidian black eyes. Ashe had drawn up and signed a peace treaty with the Baknamy tribe populating Nabudis five and half months ago and amazingly the Baknamy had upheld their side of the treaty extraordinarily well, seeming eager to play a part in the Hume world that had long excluded them.

'Mist is quiet; small Mist in Nabudis not like before.'

The Baknamy General told her in his broken speech, freed of the breathing mask and sitting tall (if only in attitude) among the rest of her multi-racial cabinet.

'I see. Master Kytes, would you say that the comparative peace of Nabudis is because of the Anti-Mist implosion? Is it reasonable to presume that the volume of ambient Mist in an area has some bearing on the violence of Fiends and the atmospheric conditions?'

Ashe addressed her Chief Mage, the timid young man sitting uncomfortably in his chair surrounded by the most influential men and one woman in Dalmasca. He blinked at her nervously and awkwardly cleared his throat.

'Um, it may not be a good idea to make assumptions,' Kytes piped up, 'It might be the case in Nabudis, but then Nabudis does not occupy land over a Mist Fault.'

Kato, the leader of the Bangaa Union of Rabanastre (an organisation that supported the cultural and employment rights of all Bangaa's living in the crown city) turned his keen yellow eyes on Kytes, 'These fault lines……what are they?'

Oanato the representative sent from the Council of Nalbina to sit on the cabinet of the country for this month, happened to be both a female Seeq and a baker by trade, nodded her large pinkish coloured head, 'Mmmmm, heard a lot about these Mist faults have I, alla sudden like to boot, but never heard a whit 'bout them before the Turning.'

Ashe returned to her seat at the head of the table as Kytes sat up a little straighter in his chair; a strange confidence suffusing his features as the conversation moved to his area of expertise – Mist, magic, and geology.

'We've known about the Mist faults that criss-cross Ivalice for at least a hundred years. The Moogle geologist Arturo discovered their existence and posited that the fault lines running deep under the ground could affect the atmosphere and nature of all life on Ivalice, but no one believed him.'

'Why not?' Oanato asked as everyone else in the room listened to Kytes, quiet as a ghost in a tomb most of the time, except when discussing academia.

Kytes smiled faintly, 'Mostly because he was a Moogle and at the time Humes didn't believe Moogles knew how to do much of anything,' Kytes shrugged, 'of course fifty years later another Moogle created the first Mist engine airship, but by that time Arturo was dead and most of his work forgotten.'

Ashe was only half listening to Kytes. This was because something had been bothering her throughout her cabinet meeting, or perhaps not bothering her precisely, but intruding on her thoughts like a half formed idea that would not go away, but remained frustratingly elusive.

For no obvious reason it suddenly occurred to her that her cabinet was not like any other governing body in Ivalice.

Among those that made up the members of her cabinet only herself, Kytes (who was not technically a member of her cabinet but merely an advisor) and Estella her minister of Agrarian Affairs were Hume.

For the first time Ashe really looked at each member of her cabinet and realised that in all Ivalice her cabinet was unique in its diversity; or maybe just in its honesty – few other governments recognised the equal rights of Seeqs, Bangaas and Moogles, let alone appointed them in positions of power.

Ashe let her gaze drift over each member of her cabinet in turn. There was Migelo (Minister of Commerce) and Kato (of the Nalbina Council), both of the Bangaa race and proud of it. There were the three Seeq's, Oanato, Tebliss-Montjoy (Minister of Culture) and Cleekma (Minister of Education) MontBlanc (her Chancellor) and Tabitt (Minister of the Interior) were both Moogles and then there was Eats Fast and Kills Faster, so far without a portfolio, and the first Baknamy representative to any government in all Ivalice.

Even Tetusya the Garif representative, who could not attend due to the floods, helped to illuminate, even in absentia, the idea that was tickling at the back of Ashe's mind.

As the conversation regarding the Mist Faults and the possibilities of further environmental disasters took up her ministers' concentration Ashe considered the very real fact that Humes were, arguably, the most conceited race on Ivalice.

It was almost an instinctive assumption for Ashe, Larsa, Al-Cid, and every other (hume) leader of Ivalice politics to see the Occuria as a threat to the Hume way of life, but the truth was, Humes did not live upon Ivalice alone.

Ashe's eyes gravitated and fixed on Eats Fast and Kills Faster thoughtfully. Under normal circumstances the notion of a Hume monarch so much as acknowledging the rights of the Baknamy would have caused enormous diplomatic controversy, (much as a hundred years ago the idea of a Moogle master engineer would have been laughable) but in light of the Turning no one now blinked an eye at Baknamy blacksmiths trading goods in Muthru Bazaar; instead they were simply happy to know someone still had goods to sell and the will to do so.

It was ironic, Ashe mused dryly, that it took an Ivalice wide crisis to highlight how silly racial prejudice was. It was then that it hit her, the idea coming fully formed and bright and clear as divine inspiration (had she believed in such a thing).

'Master Montblanc,' Ashe interrupted the conversation without having heard a word of it. Silence fell upon the cabinet as they all turned towards their Queen who rose from the chair buoyed up by the power of her idea.

'Yes, your Majesty?'

'Master Montblanc, and in fact, the rest of you as well something of great import has just occurred to me and I crave your indulgence while I test a theory.'

The members of her cabinet simply looked at her expectantly; Ashe was a reasonable ruler and willing to take the advice of her advisors but she was still a monarch, if she wanted to talk theories and vagaries none on her cabinet would interrupt.

Knowing this well enough, Ashe continued, mind running fast ahead of her words.

'Each of you represent a race of Ivalice, each different and with your own culture and mores, and yet, we are all here in this place because of a common nationality and a common threat.'

She barely noticed the perplexed looks her cabinet shared between themselves as Ashe's eyes were blind to all except the idea burning like a beacon and lighting her thoughts along new pathways, growing in momentum and clarity with every mental step.

It almost seemed to her like a voice was whispering in her hindbrain, telling her that this was right, this was the way forward, that acknowledging that Humes were not the be all and end all of Ivalice was the way forward if she wished to defeat the Occuria once and for all.

'We do not know what the Occuria want. Do they merely want to crush us all in vengeance, or is this some ploy in their ageless game?'

Restless Ashe began to pace once more before the rain lashed windows, which cast strange liquid shadows onto the floor at her feet. The sun, trying to burn through the curtain of the rain, hit the water drops on the windowsills and sent prisms of light and twisting colour across the walls.

The entire room looked almost as if it was deep under the ocean, Ashe mused, while she organised her thoughts.

'We have hypothesised that the Occuria are reacting to the development of the Anti-Mist Engine; that they are trying to show us the power at their disposal to scare us away from using the engine to wipe them out all together.'

Vaan, who had been leaning against a pillar near the door in his capacity as guard to the Queen's person, shifted slightly as he watched Ashe pace. He cleared his throat and spoke up, 'Huh? Seems like a stupid way of doing things to me. I mean, before the Turning, we all thought the Occuria were beaten. We didn't have any reason to go after them.'

Ashe spun on her heel, 'Precisely.'

Vaan blinked in surprise when he saw the strange brilliance, the reflected intensity of Ashe's revelation, glowing in her grey eyes. The fatigue and the heartache fell away from her face and her body as she came to truly believe what her instincts were telling her.

'It was all a trap; the Occuria were just lulling us, the Humes of Ivalice who dared call ourselves the greatest of all the races, into a false sense of security. It wasn't an accident that a _hume_ scientist created a weapon against Mist – it was the Occuria who ensured it!'

'_What?' _

A number of her cabinet rose from their seats and immediately began clamouring for explanation.

Ashe, although she did not know it, was smiling as she thoughtfully rubbed her finger over her lips and her feet turned inward, a habitual posture she had possessed this childhood. For just an instant the years fell away and she appeared as she had been at nineteen – but with the strength of hindsight blazing in her eyes.

'Do you not see the artistry of it all?'

Ashe appealed to her cabinet, but also to Vaan, who had seen the Occuria's manipulations in affect once before.

'Venat, the traitor, once used a Hume scientist as a weapon against her brethren. We always assumed Venet meant for Vayne and the Empire to dominate Ivalice using Nethicite, but what if Venat's true intention was simply to disrupt the control of the Occuria by finally opening Hume eyes to their existence?'

Vaan frowned, 'But Ashe, Venat helped Dr Cid destroy Nabudis, and start a war. Venat did _help_ Vayne fight us on Bahamut.'

Ashe shook her head, actually stamping her foot when it seemed that those around her could not conceive of what she had accidentally stumbled upon.

'No, no, you are seeing it all wrong. Think about it, Vaan, whenever we met Cid, it seemed as if he knew our moves before we made them. It was Cid that manipulated us to travel to Giruvegan, thus revealing the existence of Gerun and the Occuria.'

Kytes rose from the table with a scrap of chair leg against the marble floor; the clomping of his Mages staff against the white polished stone tapped out a counter-point to his thoughts.

'Highness, are you suggesting that the Occuria engineered a reason to come to prominence again? That the Anti-Mist engine is merely a….a…..' he trailed off unable to find the words, staff clicking in agitation against the stone floor.

'Balthier once told me something,' Ashe said softly stroking her lip, 'We were playing cards and I was a good few hundred Gil up. I remember asking him if he was letting me win,' Ashe laughed sadly, 'the man was…._is…._something of a gambler by nature and I am not so arrogant as to believe that I could out bluff him.'

Vaan grinned and snorted in dry amusement, 'Yeah, but Balthier never played cards to win, only ever to lose. I remember that he'd always make sure that he lost every hand he played until the person playing against him started to figure it out and began to try and,' Vaan shook his head, 'out lose him I guess; it became a competition of who could lose the most Gil the fastest. I never figured out why he did it and he'd never explain anyway.'

Ashe nodded, smiling, 'He told me. He told me that every man, woman, and child has a natural inclination to want to win. Therefore there was more skill in losing competitively than winning. Everyone wants to outdo their competitor, especially when it seems like the competition have an ace up their sleeve.'

Montblanc walked across the cabinet table top to address his Queen, 'With all due respect, Highness, what does this have to do with the Occuria?'

Ashe turned to Montblanc seriously, 'The Anti-Mist engine could destroy the Occuria. Whatever they are, gods, monsters, or merely some strange hidden race much the same as any of us, the Occuria nevertheless seem to have a strong link to Mist, greater than any other race in Ivalice; that which destroys Mist would hurt them, correct?'

Kytes spoke up, 'That seems likely, Highness. In fact from all I have learned of the Occuria and seen of their power it seems to be an almost bedrock certainty.'

Ashe nodded, 'Then, using the analogy of the card game, it would seem that the Anti-Mist engine is our hidden ace, correct?'

Vaan rubbed the back of his neck and frowned down at his shuffling feet, 'But we've seen what the Anti-Mist engine can do. If we used it on Giruvegan, like the Empire used Nabudis bomb, then we'd do just as much damage to ourselves and Ivalice as the Occuria are doing now. Nothing can survive without Mist.'

Ashe nodded waiting for the Gil to drop and wondering who would be first to understand the incredibly delicate trap that had been laid by Gerun and the Occuria from the very moment of Bahamut's fall and Venat's failure.

It was young Kytes who worked it all out first. She saw his eyes grow wide as his grip loosed on his staff and the ornately carved wooden pole clattered to the marble floor. He said not one word as the rain continued to strike the windows and the liquid sunlight reflections writhed and danced across the room, but she saw the stunned horror of his own revelation.

'The Occuria have already lost and in so doing assured their victory,' Ashe murmured softly staring out at the rain obscured windows.

'Their secrets were revealed by Venat; no longer can they pull our strings from the shadows and dominate the will of Ivalice. Therefore they can afford to lose, because they have nothing of value left to win. It is like Balthier's card game. We hold all the cards, the pot could be ours, but the only way to be rid of the Occuria is to defeat ourselves.'

'Gods no,' Kytes whispered, 'We can't ever use the Anti-Mist engine because it will hurt us even more than the Occuria; they'll just die but the effects of the Anti-Mist will last for decades. Even if we kill the Occuria we can't win, because it will be meaningless if we destroy Ivalice while doing it.'

Ashe walked quietly across the marble floor of her audience chamber and resumed her seat amid the horrified silence of her cabinet.

'There is no life on Ivalice without the Mist and there is no Mist without Occuria. Therefore Ivalice _needs_ the Occuria. We are trapped. We cannot win because the other side is _prepared_ to lose and we can never do so.'

Vaan's feet scraping against the floor heralding his approach. His hand came down to clasp Ashe's shoulder where she sat in her chair elbows on the chair arms propping up her drooping head.

'We can't give up. Ashe, we can't just give in to them; not after everything we fought for.'

Ashe simply nodded her head in response to Vaan's impassioned plea, 'Contact Larsa, Al-Cid, and every leader of every tribe, clan, and sentient species on Ivalice. Humes may be the chosen pawns of the Occuria but we are but one race and the Occuria threaten the existence of all.'

She rose from her chair and looked from each scared and solemn face to another. Her own expression filled with a strange clarity of purpose and resolution, 'We shall fight, I promise you this. Ivalice shall never fall to Occuria tyranny while breath remains in my body. We will fight and we will do so not as one kingdom against one enemy, but as one voice, one will, one _Ivalice_ against a common foe.'

Resolve hardened the eyes and straightened the spines of all those gathered in the chamber and without further words those gathered left, some almost running in their haste to finally _do_ something in response to the Occuria's shadowy threat.

Eventually it was only Vaan and Ashe left and her Knight once more placed his hand on her shoulder, 'Ashe….if you are right, that means what happened to Balthier…' he swallowed and let his words drift away to be swallowed by the rain.

Ashe closed her eyes and rubbed her eyelids, a tired sigh escaped her lips, 'I know. It means that the Occuria were responsible for everything all along, from the very beginning. They had to get rid of Venat.'

Vaan crouched down at the side of Ashe's chair, resting one arm on the tabletop. He looked up into her face as Ashe turned to him with eyes too remote for tears.

'Then do you think he's dead?' Vaan took a breath and Ashe was forced to remember that Balthier was the one to teach Vaan to fly; Vaan would not give up on him any more easily than she would.

'If the Occuria knew about Venat being inside Balthier, even though _he_ didn't know, then they'd want to make sure Venat couldn't fight against them, or side with us, and to do that…..'

Ashe nodded looking down at the gaudy, cheap metal double banded green and yellow ring she had worn on her thumb for almost seven years.

'Gerun would try to kill Venat's Hume host. One assumes that Venat does not have the strength to act alone, therefore if they were to kill Balthier, Venat would likely die with him.'

Vaan rested his fingers atop Ashe's hand as it played with that chunky ring, which was too large for her to wear as a true wedding band, but which she would not dream of altering.

'So you think he really is...?'

Ashe pulled her hands away sharply and rose from the chair. Her shoes cracked across the marble as she stalked over to the window.

'I did not say I believed it to be so; only that I thought Gerun would _try_ and do so.' she snapped.

Raising one hand she tried to wipe the steam of condensation from the windowpane and peered out beyond the deluge transforming the glass into a running stream and fracturing the familiar view outside into a thousand strange and blurry fragments.

Ashe's breath caught in her throat as a stooped figure stepped from the shadow of a bedraggled palm tree in the gardens beyond the window.

'Vaan!'

The form was obscured by the rain pouring over the glass pane, but it seemed to Ashe that it was a Hume form. Stooped and hunched over a cane or walking stick and wearing either a cloak or trails of rags.

'That's….is that…but it can't be…' Vaan crowded up against her as he peered out of the window and the shuffling figure in the garden moved forward towards them. Ashe's heart stopped for a handful of beats and her breath froze in her lungs as the man's identity was slowly revealed through the veil of torrential rain.

Vaan grabbed her suddenly rigid shoulders and pulled her away from the window, breath hissing through clenched teeth as he too recognised the other man, 'Professor Kry!'

Outside the window the man let the cane drop from his hands as he raised both arms out from his body and slowly straightened his age hunched spine; face in shadow Ashe could nevertheless feel his eyes on her, and it was not the gaze of odious Professor Kry that pierced her mind and soul.

'No!' Ashe tore from Vaan's grip, 'Not you. Not here!'

She saw the flash of uneven teeth behind a dirty, knotted beard as the figure of Kry took one long stride forward to come to a halt right in front of the window.

Both Vaan and Ashe backed away into the chamber as rippling eldritch light crackled and danced around that grey and brown rag covered form.

'……_No!...' _Vaan's face twisted in anger as he threw himself across Ashe's body to shield her and Kry raised one, gnarled, arthritis plagued finger to point straight at her.

'_Noooooooo!' _

A jet stream of pure Mist fire erupted from his fingertip, obliterating the window in a hail of liquid hot glass shards and pulverised masonry. Vaan threw Ashe to the ground and covered her body with his, allowing his exposed back to take the brunt of the flying debris.

It seemed to Ashe as if the whole of existence became one pulsating, rippling stream of colour, spinning like falling stars, as the Mist beam scored through the chamber.

Struggling up from under Vaan's weight Ashe began to kick backwards, almost crap-walking over the floor, dragging a bleeding, unconscious, Vaan with her as the old man in rags walked through the smoking hole left in her palace wall.

He smiled and from within the frail form of the old man an almost mantis-like wraith of Mist, flickering in shades of blue and green and dragon tongue purple, filled the room.

_Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca, you took Blade of Treaty from us and betrayed the trade. Now you will know the doom of the oath breaker. _

The insidious voice rattled like the gale blowing in through the hole in her wall and bit at her mind the way the hail mixed rain bit at her skin as it tore through the chamber. Slowly Ashe rose to her full height and stepped forward, away from the downed Vaan, to face her old adversary.

Standing proud, though she be unarmed and disadvantaged, Ashe tilted her chin and met the eyes, not of the flesh puppet Hume, but of the blind and inhume master.

'Gerun…..I have been expecting you.'

* * *

_A/N: Next up: Can you tell the Wood from the trees?_


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter Thirty: Confirmation of Life and Mist Amid the Branches **

Ashe stood before Vaan, who was breathing fitfully as he lay on the floor amid a quilt of shattered glass and pulverised masonry. Professor Kry, wreathed in Mist, dragged himself through the hole in the wall with limping gait; Ashe narrowed her eyes speculatively as she watched the old man labour.

'I am glad you are here, Professor, I have much I would discuss with you.' Ashe stated in hard, clipped authoritative tones. 'First among those would be the whereabouts of my husband, and for your sakes, you had best have good news.'

Kry did not answer as he almost fell and went sprawling across the floor after tripping on a fist sized chunk of stone. Ashe felt her lip curl.

'Would prefer to sit down while we talk, Professor?'

As she spoke she wondered what in the name of the gods was keeping her guardsmen from breaking down the door; surely they could not have failed to notice the explosion?

'You are remiss in a debt to us and we seek recompense.'

Kry's voice was maligned by an alien hissing sibilance and once again the Mist coalesced into the vaguely mantis like form of Gerun. Ashe ignored the mirage and concentrated on the flesh and blood intruder.

'I have no will to listen to the words of false and feeble gods. Can you find no better tools to do your bidding then sickly old men, Gerun?'

Without waiting for a reply, Ashe leant down to help a dazed and befuddled Vaan to his feet and led him to one of the still standing chairs arrayed around the debris littered table.

'Are you alright, Vaan, is anything broken?' she asked as she dropped to crouch before him and looked over the blood slicked mess that was his back. Glass shards winked in the light, half embedded in his flesh, and while as she had no doubt that it was painful, she did not think the wound life threatening.

Vaan looked up with sweat sheathed brow twisted into a heated glare, 'Ashe….don't take your eyes off that thing for a second.'

_That thing, _otherwise known as Kry, had managed to haul himself over to the table and was now leaning, with knuckles white against the surface, over the table. It was not so much a pose of intimidation as it was imminent collapse.

'Recompense……humes must pay for breaking the covenant….' Kry was wheezing like a bellows and Ashe fought down a wave of contemptuous amusement.

'Please, a stiff breeze could fell Kry in one swoop.'

Old, yellowed and bloodshot eyes fixed on hers and once more the Mist swirled and eddied in impudent fury, 'How dare you…'

Ashe rose to her feet and waved one hand in sharp dismissal, 'How dare I?'

She rounded the table and advanced on Kry and his Mist shadow, 'This is my kingdom and my home. I dare much and I will personally break your arthritic, skinny little neck, Professor Kry, unless you get your stinking carcass away from my palace this instant.'

The Mist roiled, the image of Gerun growing stronger above both their heads; she could almost feel the cold rage of the Occuria against her skin. Behind her Vaan tried to get to his feet in case the Occuria stroke at her once more, but with a groan his arms could not take his weight and he slumped into his chair again.

'Ashe….don't…..you don't know what they…..can do…'

Ashe smiled and it was more a bearing of teeth than any form of healthy Hume expression, 'Oh, I think I do. The Occuria are tricksters, deceivers. They are no better than murmurs and street magicians. Smoke and Mirrors; they are nothing but false deceivers and they can do _nothing_.'

It was a huge gamble and Ashe knew it very well as she stared down the Occuria riddled Professor Kry. She knew the Occuria's power; she had seen what chaos they could bring to Ivalice, but even so, she did not believe that Gerun would strike her dead. Had that been his intention he would have done so without ever making his presence known.

Creatures that could drown an entire coastline and destroy the natural laws of Ivalice should not need to use the mouldering old bones of men like Kry to do their bidding. There was some weakness here to be exploited. It merely confirmed for Ashe that the Occuria were not all powerful, omnipotent beings, but merely another form of war mongering aggressor.

The Mist mantis Gerun flickered and she thought she even saw his mandibles quiver with outrage as Kry's face twisted into a nasty yellow-toothed snarl, 'Careful Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca. We hold your husband ransom as we hold all Ivalice in our hands. You would be wise not to provoke us when we come offering reconciliation.'

A thrill of pure, unadulterated relief and triumph shot through Ashe with a force and energy to rival the Mist storms. She had heard the words, straight from the mouth of the Occuria and the Hume who had stolen Balthier from her.

_We hold your husband ransom._

He was alive!

Without hesitation and with the smooth motions of utter confidence and long practice Ashe pulled the knife from the hidden sheath high on her thigh and withdrew it via the purpose cut slit in the pocket of her skirt.

'Thank you Professor that was all I needed to know.'

In one smooth arc she brought the knife up and around and drew it deftly, swiftly, across the mottled, flaccid hanging flesh of Kry's neck.

Kry's sluggish, Mist polluted blood did not so much shower the air as spurt in thick, stinking dribbles from the line of severed flesh she had drawn across his throat.

'Now!' Ashe screamed to the troops hidden in her gardens and outside her doors, who had been waiting for this very moment, as she jumped back from Kry and hit the floor of her ruined chamber.

Filo leapt from her place behind a pillar in the far corner of the room with bow and arrow drawn taut. She released one arrow, the head plated with pieces of magicite. The arrow found a home in the centre of Kry's chest as he flailed back wildly, hands gripping at his throat.

The rumble of the custom built miniature siege engine, modified to carry a smaller version of Kry's own Anti-Mist engine, rattled the ground and remaining glass in the other windows of the chamber as her guards pushed it through the double-doors of the room.

'Did you think me a fool Gerun? Did you think that I, Larsa, and all those you might seek to blackmail, and turn against the rest, had not a contingency plan for such an occurrence?'

Ashe laughed harshly as she moved carefully around the table, keeping low to avoid being caught in any cross-fire as she made for the safety of the far side of the chamber.

'Are the Occuria so arrogant that you think old tricks will still work? Dalmasca is not alone amid a sea of enemies anymore, Gerun; I am not alone and I care not for your games or your false reconciliations and chains of allegiance!'

Kry had dropped to his knees but still, despite blood loss, and the arrow in his chest, he was not dead. Mist blazed about his head in shades and hues of light that defied description. They fitted no spectrum of colour she had ever seen before and scarred the retina of the eyes to look too long upon them.

For just a moment Kry's old, hunched, and infirm body seemed to ripple and fold in on itself as if he was the illusion and Gerun the reality. Ashe's breath froze in her throat for a paralysed second of terror; Gerun's inhume, unnatural form, like that of a insect carved of stone, seemed to emerge from the Mist until that high, angled head all but touched the mosaic ceiling of the chamber some thirteen feet above their heads.

_You will pay._

The voice was an obscene, ear-rending amalgamation of Kry's nasal tones and Gerun's whining, inhume inflection. It filled her mind and made her ears bleed, hammering Ashe and her guards to their knees with its sheer force.

There was a blinding, burning flash of greenish light and the thick, retching scent of burning flesh and metal filled the chamber for an instance before a blast of furnace hot air roared through the room and knocked the breath from Ashe's lungs as it tossed her, rolling head over heels, across the chamber floor to hit the far wall.

Then all was quiet and Ashe could only hear the incessant downpour of the rain as it pounded her gardens and swept in through the hole in the outer wall of the chamber. Slowly she lifted her head and looked about her, much as her guards were doing where they had been tossed like nine pins across the room.

The anti-Mist cannon was little more than twisted metal and burning slag amid a scorched black patch of marble flooring by the doors and there was no sign of Kry save the spatters of his blood all over the table and chair back where he had been standing when she slashed him with the knife.

Ashe rose shakily to her feet and only then realised that her nose was bleeding. She wiped at it irritably with trembling hands.

'Your Majesty?'

One of the guards, she did not know his name, approached her quietly, wide eyed and pale faced from all he had just witnessed and Ashe snapped back into focus.

She pointed a finger, 'You – open a channel to Al-Cid, and the Marquis in Bhujerba; in fact contact everyone in a position of power and tell them what happened here. Let all the leaders of Ivalice know that Gerun has made contact and we should expect retaliation in kind.'

Ashe spun on her heel to look at Vaan, who was being helped to his feet by a worried looking Filo.

'Vaan – how soon until you are fit?'

Vaan looked up at her, one arm slung about Filo's shoulders and face grey with a mixture of pain sweat and encroaching shock. Nevertheless he managed a pained smile, 'Give me a couple of Elixirs and some tweezers for the splinters and I'm good to go.'

'Vaan!' Filo immediately chided him but Ashe felt herself smile. She nodded briskly.

'Good. Be sure to see the Palace physician and then make full speed for Archadia, by any means you can fly. Tell Larsa what has happened and make sure you tell him that _Balthier is alive_.'

Vaan's grin widened, 'You can count on me, Ashe.'

Ashe nodded, already distracted, and walked over to the hole in her palace wall. She stood in that blasted open space and lifted her face to the wind. The precipitation slapped at her face, cold and filled with pellets of sleet unnatural to the desert, but Ashe barely felt it.

'I refuse to play these games any longer; the Occuria's strength lies only in our acquiescence. It is high time we of Ivalice forced Giruvegan to play by our rules.'

* * *

Penelo ran, or walked very swiftly, up the steps of the gangway adjacent to the open air landing strip of the private Imperial aerodrome, while keeping her hood over her head with difficulty and battling the fierce headwind.

The Veccara's left wing was aflame from an errant bolt of lightening and the airship was weaving drunkenly in the air, battered hither and thither by the storm. Penelo could only stand high on the gantry and watch the ships erratic descent as lightening slashed the inky night sky.

At her back a well meaning Solidor adherent was trying to persuade his Empress to get out of the rain and the storm and as far from the landing strip as physically possible before the Veccara hit the runway with a fateful crash.

Penelo waved him off without really hearing a word and raised her hand to shield her eyes as she watched the beleaguered airship struggle to line up with the landing strip.

Ordinarily the ship would simply come into dock in the aerodrome and never need to set down, but with the wing alight and the flames crawling ever closer to the exposed front glossair engine it was too dangerous to allow the Veccara to dock in the aerodrome.

If the Glossair engine ignited within the aerodrome the resultant explosion could take out most of the building, and with the aerodrome filled with airships unable to fly in this weather, the explosion could be even larger still.

Of course none of this mattered to Penelo so much as the realisation that if the Glossair engine went up in mid-air Vaan would be killed instantly along with any passenger he might have; Penelo dreaded to think what calamity had befallen Dalmasca to possess Vaan to attempt to fly half-way across Ivalice in the raging Mist storms.

Airstrip attendants were shouting orders to one another and preparing emergency landing gear and fire extinguishing materials below her as Penelo's hands bit into the metal railing of the gantry she stood on and her eyes rooted to the struggling Veccara as if she could draw Vaan safely to the ground through sight alone.

'Come on, Vaan, come on. You're too fast; vent the back facing glossair engines. You don't have any choice.'

She whispered fiercely into the wind and the lashing rain. Years of co-flying, and more than one close encounter with the ground, had still not prepared Penelo for the agony of watching from the sidelines as the Veccara came hurtling towards the landing strip far too fast.

'Come on Vaan!' she smacked her fist into the railing and the platinum band of her wedding ring (a filigreed Galbana lily twinned with a Solidor serpent and crusted with blue diamonds and blood rubies) clinked against the metal bar with a hollow clicking sound.

Well past what Penelo thought was the last possible moment, the Veccara vented its back glossair engines in a cloud of Mist vapour that was instantly swallowed up into the storm.

The strategy was risky, as venting Mist exhaust into the atmosphere could result in a large explosion even on a clear, fine day, but it was the only way that Vaan could avoid the Veccara going up in a ball of flame upon impact with the landing strip.

Helpless bystander all Penelo could do was twist her hands around the metal railing and watch as the Veccara's nose tilted upwards as Vaan presumably waged a one man war against the forces of gravity, momentum, and velocity to bring the Veccara down in one piece.

The Veccara's anchor smashed down from the hull and gouged into the smooth landing strip, tearing chunks of treated concrete and stone up like flakes of gravel as Vaan used the anchor to forcibly slow the ships descent; it could even work if it didn't tear the vessel in half first.

In the end she could not watch the moment of impact and turned her face away, sheltered by her water proofed fur hood. Nevertheless the monstrously huge sound of metal screaming across broken stone and the roar of glossair engines still powered up so close to the ground told her all she needed to know.

Unconsciously Penelo pressed her hands to her stomach as tears tried to force there way out of her squeezed shut eyes; she tasted bile on her tongue at the same time as the acrid scent of burning airship assaulted her nostrils.

When silence rushed in to fill the moment immediately after the crash Penelo bowed her head on a moan of pain, '….Vaan….'

'Penelo! Hey Penelo!'

She twisted around so fast she tripped on her feet and fell against the railing. The attendant shadow immediately reached out to steady her but Penelo was already skidding and running to the gantry stairs as, gangly and energetic as a boy, Vaan bounded over to her. The Veccara, bent, smouldering and half on its side, sprawled across the landing strip swarmed by airstrip attendants.

Somehow, despite the odds, both airship and pilot were in one piece. Penelo launched herself from the third step of the stairs from the bottom and into Vaan's arms. After she had hugged him fiercely and kissed both his cheeks she hit him (hard) in the stomach and slapped him across the top of the head as he doubled up slightly.

'You idiot; you could have been killed!'

Vaan bounced up to his full height (which was only an inch or so taller than Penelo – Vaan had not grown a fraction of an inch since he was seventeen), with the exuberance that someone who has just narrowly avoided a fatal crash should not have, Vaan picked Penelo up in a bear hug and swung her around (much to the quiet horror of the Solidor attendants who were not sure that a foreign national should be so man-handling their Empress).

Penelo, caught between laughing and the urge to throw up, wriggled out of his grip, 'Vaan put me down,' which he did dumping back on her feet before she was completely ready.

'Vaan, you shouldn't treat a woman in my condition like that.' She added mulishly as she rubbed her stomach – true it was too early to see anything of her 'condition' but Penelo had waited so long she wanted to milk it for all it was worth.

Vaan, ebullient and oblivious, just gave her a look as he shook his soaked hair from his brow, 'Huh, Pen, you aren't even fat yet. Anyway where's Larsa I need to see him.'

Penelo decided that just this once she would let such a comment slide and focused on the issue at hand, 'Why? What's happened, is Ashe alright?'

Vaan's grin was as fierce and bright as the sun that barely ever showed its face these days, 'Better than alright: we have confirmation.'

In that instant Penelo forgot the rain and the wind and the constant low grade nausea that she had been battling morning, evening, and night for the last six weeks. Her own smile matched Vaan's for its brilliance and triumph.

'What happened?' she seized Vaan's arm and began to tow him towards the private monorail line that would take them, via underground tunnels, straight to the Imperial palace.

'Ashe handed Gerun his head – well nearly,' Vaan said cheerfully, 'she managed to make him admit to holding Balthier: _we hold your husband ransom. _He said and I was there when he said it too, and come on, there's no point in a corpse as a hostage, so he's got to be alive, right?'

Penelo nodded to the attendant piloting the monorail, 'Send word ahead to His Lorship Larsa, tell him Captain Vaan of Dalmasca has arrived with essential word from Queen Ashe.' she paused and spoke around another smile as she impulsively squeezed Vaan's hand, 'Tell him we have confirmation of life.'

* * *

In all games there are winners and losers, in all skirmishes there are victors and the vanquished and in all wars there are aggressors and there are victims. Look hard enough and far enough and there is always someone, or some group, who have no stake in the battles being fought but whose lives and liberty become hostage to the will and might of others.

It is the way of things, and long it has been the way of Ivalice; some fall so others may rise and the cruel cycle has yet to be broken.

Look you now, as the eagle flies, in the long shadow of the Kerwon mountains' and within the reach of hostile Giruvegan, to the high canopy and dense paths of Golmore.

Watch as the storm gathers; tendrils of light and forks of mystic colour spreading as fine as the webs of spiders across the cloud tossed and storm laboured sky from the Misted heart of Giruvegan.

Watch as the strikes and daggers of Mist, like jabbing fingers bore into the ground from Feywood down towards the verdant darkness of Golmore. Watch as the storm gathers and the clouds swirl about one lurid golden eye of a false god in his wounded pride, high over the very canopy of the ancient jungle of the Viera.

As the eagle flies the Mist does shriek in a column of hate and vitriol lancing down in a solid pillar of fury to strike the very heart of the jungle.

Hellhounds twist and writhe as Mist devours their vaporous bodies in a silent wave of destruction that runs through the old and worn passages of Golmore like a raging river, washing all away that finds itself within the wake of vainglory and wretched pride.

The path of verdant praise ripped asunder and razed to dust in an instant as the Mist wave breaches Eruyt. All this happens in the silence of seconds and the first victims do not suffer over much nor are they troubled with the knowledge of their own demise.

Others are not so lucky; the silence breaks, the wave crests, and Golmore burns as Mjrn, her gathered bundle of herbs fallen at her feet, faces the wave and screams.

Look hard enough and there are always victims.

Eruyt burns and the eagle, with the cunning of the wild creature, flies far, far from Giruvegan's wrath.


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter Thirty-One: Ivalice Turning: the Ears of the Wood**

_A/N: once again thank you to everyone reading and reviewing this story. I have said it once and I will say it a thousand times more; your feedback means the world to me. Thank you muchly ;)_

* * *

Larsa sat back against the couch in his private study and drew Penelo down with him with one arm about her shoulders. He had better sense than to mention it but he was not too pleased that she had been out in the storm at all, let alone while experiencing the stress of watching Vaan crash an airship.

'We hold you husband ransom as we hold all Ivalice in our hands?' he mused out loud watching an energetic Vaan work off the adrenaline from his dangerous flight and eventful landing by pacing a tight circuit around the study from the coffee table to the door, across to the left side book case and then veering to the right to skirt Penelo's writing desk and back again.

'Yes, that's what Kry said, or Gerun, or you, both of them.'

Al-Cid, lounging back against the cushions of the loveseat with his arms stretched out across the back, tapped his foot jauntily with one ankle resting on his knee and shook the thick fringe of black hair from his shaded eyes.

'Dis is de news we been waiting for, eh? We 'ad long suspected that de Lady Ashe would be de one de Occuria revealed demselves to, an' dat it was Kry dat was deir vessel all along, no?'

Larsa nodded, tapping the fingers of his free hand against the white floral brocade of the couch arm as his other arm almost unconsciously squeezed Penelo closer. Penelo sipping a cup of hot lemon tea reached to squeeze his knee in reassurance and addressed Al-Cid on his behalf.

'It's wonderful news if Balthier is alive, because it proves that we were right, and that if they had killed him they'd have flaunted his body or something to try and break Ashe's spirit; kind of like when they used Prince Rasler's image to manipulate Ashe all those years ago.'

Al-Cid raised an amused eyebrow as Larsa remained quiet and let Penelo talk for him. The President of the Rozzarian confederate was not on friendly terms with the Master Bunansa (not that he wished the man dead – but he would reserve judgement before he declared the possibility that the former pirate still drew breath as 'wonderful news').

'Den we are to assume dat de Gran Kiltias Marana be correct an' dat Bunansa, or I should say, de traitor Venat 'ave information dat can 'elp us defeat de Occuria once and for all?'

Larsa stilled his drumming fingers and sighed, as they approached the heart of his concerns, 'That is not what she said, my friend, Marana alluded to the possibility that Venat or Balthier, or possibly both, hold the 'key to peace between creators and created, parent and offspring, brother and sister of Ivalice.'

Vaan whirled around and circled back from his latest circuit of the room, 'So? Does it matter how it's done so long as we stop the Turning?'

Larsa frowned abstractedly, 'I think it depends on the terms of this peace.' he mused as Al-Cid nodded sagely, 'After all, directly after the fall of Dalmasca's liberty my father declared a universal peace, however, although they were no longer under the hammer of open war I doubt your kinsmen enjoyed the terms of that peace, did they Vaan?'

Penelo drew away from him slightly and gave him a very level stare, 'You think we'll be enslaved by the Occuria?'

Larsa smiled faintly and shook his head, 'I think that all prophecy is suspect and open to interpretation and until we are able to prove that Balthier lives, and that he is not merely a tool of Venat…'

Larsa was interrupted by Vaan's derisive snort, 'Never happen.'

When all eyes turned to him Vaan waved his arms about to elaborate his point, 'I mean, come on, Balthier might be off his rocker, but he's not his father. If he's crazy it's because he's crazy, not because some Mist thing is telling him what to do.'

Al-Cid, who rather supported the notion that Balthier was indeed somewhat outside the remit of fully sane (the man had once pummelled him to a bloody pulp with the butt of his rifle after all) could not help but see the prosaic logic behind Vaan's view.

'It would seem passing strange, eh, if de man 'ave been under de influence o' de Occuria Venat for de last decade an' no one notice any diff'rence, no?'

Larsa conceded all this with a faint smile and nod of the head, 'Very well, but my point was merely that there are too many unknowns and variables for us to assume that simply finding Balthier will solve our dilemma. The man, if he is alive, has been captive of the Occuria for half a year. He may not be in fit state to aid us even if we locate him.'

Vaan flopped down onto the loveseat beside Al-Cid who, clearing his throat, somewhat pointedly and completely without effect, shifted over a little to make room for the muscular Rabanastran who thought nothing of sharing space with the head of the largest true democracy in all Ivalice.

'I thought we all agreed that he was most likely still in the Pharos; that it was the perfect place for to Occuria have imprisoned him?' Vaan frowned a little suspiciously, 'That's what Ashe thinks and I really wouldn't want to be _you_, when she finds out you've changed your minds on the Pharos assault.'

Al-Cid chuckled a little as Penelo scowled at her best friend and Larsa hurried to reassure Vaan of his mistake. Larsa was far from a fool and he most certainly did not want the Dalmascan Queen's wrath turned upon him.

'Vaan, I assure you, and by extension the Lady Ashe, that the assault on the Pharos will go ahead as soon as the fleet of sub-aquatic ships is completed and there are favourable conditions for launch.'

Vaan sat back against the loveseat and folded his arms, frowning but somewhat mollified, 'Fine, but Ashe told me to tell you that we need to launch the attack on the Pharos fast; she thinks Gerun must have figured out what our game is by now and she's worried he'll do something to stop us, or do something just as bad in retaliation for having his throat cut and heart impaled on an arrow.'

Al-Cid sat forward and tented his face in his hands, elbows on knees, 'Dese Occuria infested humes appear to 'ave more resilience den any normal man, eh? Yet I am troubled, why would de Occuria keep de traitor Venat alive?'

Larsa opened his mouth to answer when a sound from outside, the clank of metal feet as guards rushed along the corridor to the door of the study intruded upon the peaceful solitude within a split second before the double doors were flung open and a figure in vibrant blue and gold robes with a mane of pale cream hair sailed into room. Larsa's personal guard clamoured after but had clearly failed to prevent this intruder from reaching the Emperor and Empress' inner sanctum.

'The children of lesser gods must cleave to each other, bound only by loathing and forsworn in misery.'

The Gran Kiltias Marana announced as she breezed into the study holding in her long fingered hands the glowing waystone sphere that had apparently been in Balthier's hidden cache and Fran had given over to the Gran Kiltias' care allegedly in accordance with Balthier's wishes, after the Pharos incident.

Larsa had, numerous times, politedly requested that the sphere be brought to Draklor for further study, as no other hume known to history had ever worked out how the waystones functioned, let alone how to remove one from its stone plinth and use it as a remote transportation device, but despite persistent requests to Ashe, Fran, and Marana, he had been left disappointed.

Until now, for it appeared Marana had relented as she dumped the glowing device onto the very centre of the coffee table.

After a few seconds of simply watching the device pulse faintly on the coffee table, shedding white light over the bowl of fruit and the Porcelain tea service, Larsa fell back on years of diplomatic training and rose neatly to his feet deftly waving away his shame-faced personal guard.

He gave the leader of the Kiltia faith a perfect Archadian bow, as Penelo hastily stood up, set down her cup and saucer and seized up the plate of biscuits from the coffee table and Al-Cid laconically rose also. Vaan simply sat on the loveseat chewing a mouthful of imported Star Fruit and staring blankly at Marana.

Larsa cleared his throat and met the milky filmed eyes of the greatest seer known to Ivalice.

'Gran Kiltias Marana, I am honoured that you would choose to bestow your presence upon us…..so unexpectedly.'

If Marana heard the bone dry sarcasm that threaded through his otherwise sincere greeting she ignored it as she turned blank eyes to Penelo who, clearing her throat awkwardly, pushed the plate of biscuits forward toward her, 'Um, would you like a biscuit Gran Kiltias?'

A pale hand, with broken nails, shot out and grabbed up a collection of biscuits with such precision it seemed strange to fathom that Marana physically could not see what she had picked up as she greedily ferried them to her mouth.

Smiling even as biscuit crumbs fell from her working jaws Marana danced away from the table to begin petting the fine silk and velvet lined curtains framing the balcony doors. She turned back with a provocative tilt of her chin to address her dumb-founded audience.

'Occuria throw a frattle against ancient walls of apathy; the true Turning comes. Retaliation leads to a new player entering the fray. To Balfonheim's depths and beyond to Pharos our eyes do turn. Golmore to Balfonheim will come.'

* * *

Through the secret paths and across the bridges of moss and roots the Viera survivors of Eruyt fled. Deeper and deeper into the heart of screaming Golmore Jote led her people.

Mjrn, weeping for the death of those creatures of the Wood who burned to ash and melted into acid scorching vapour as the Mist rolled onwards, struggled to keep up with her sisters Viera.

The Wood was screaming with a hundred thousand voices. Every tree owned its own voice of agony, every blade of grass and burning shrub howled its rage, its pain, loud and shrieking in Mjrn's ears.

The maddening, haunting metallic sweetness of the Mist chased her heels, filled her head and contracted her heart.

The Mist offered madness, bliss, rage and abandon before it brought burning, drowning death and Mjrn did not know that she could fight if those liquid flowing tendrils should catch about her dragging feet and pull her back into the roiling wave of Mist that did hound them through the labyrinth of Golmore.

Still onward did Jote urge them, faster and fleeter of foot she made the sisters Viera be, as they ran from death come to all; the doom of Ivalice that Jote had long said would be the result of the Viera's lack of diligence.

As Mjrn dashed through thin air that became vine and root twined and moss coated walkway under Viera whisper, she turned back to help her sisters Viera erect barriers that would only slow down the Mist assault by moments.

All around the ever-constant silence and heavy darkness of Golmore was polluted, stained, maligned, by the sulphuric brilliance of fire, the acrid false darkness of indigo smoke and the mesmerising, beautiful patterns of Mist in the air.

Stumbling to a stop on the land bridge that breached the chasms of Golmore's dark, inner heart, Mjrn found herself instantly captivated by the dancing swirls of the pale, translucent shimmering colours of the Mist.

In the Wood the only colour was green in myriad shades; all things were green along the Green Way.

Those years ago when she had ventured out to the realm of Humes Mjrn had seen colours that did not exist in Viera Wood. She had seen the sheen of hume steel and the cordite flash of hume gun powder. The paleness of hume skin and the frightening blue of a sky unfettered by forest canopy.

The fierce majesty of destructions palette now laid out before her was not the same as those colours she had witnessed once before, but, as Mjrn stumbled in a tottering step back towards the flickering flame and the dancing violet and cerulean blue of the Mist sparking from tree branch to tree branch and igniting each leaf in plumes of white hot heat, she found a familiar masochistic urge to linger where all things were not green.

A strong hand closed about her arm and tugged her firmly back on the path and facing the right way, the Viera way.

'No,' Jote said. 'Look not on the light of destruction, sister, the Green Way will guide we faithful daughters beyond the Mist dooms reach.'

Onwards the Viera ran, deeper and deeper into the black wooded heart of dying Golmore, and all the way their ears did bleed with the wailing of the Wood.

* * *

Basch looked up from his baffled contemplation of some strange miscellaneous piece of airship engine at the sound of a metal tool hitting the ground a few feet away and the quick, involuntary in-drawn breath that broke the quiet he and Fran had abided by for the last several hours.

'Fran?'

Basch rose swiftly to his feet and crossed the distance with one stride as Fran stood stock still, oil grease smearing her hands from the innards of the Strahl, beached like a great, dead, sea beast on the banks of the Cerobi. Her ears were twitching visibly, flicking back and forth as her body shook with spasmodic shudders.

'Noooooo…….'

It was more breathy moan of pain than exclamation and Basch was there to catch her as Fran trembled and her legs gave way beneath her.

'Fran – Fran what ails you?'

Basch lowered her to the ground as carefully as he could as blindly Fran curled her clawed her hands into the thick wool of his jerkin. He could only stare aghast as Fran's placid, stoical beauty cracked and was cast asunder by a wave of the deepest grief he had ever seen captured upon the expression of a mortal being.

She gasped as if with her last breath and plucked at his clothing, leaving holes and oily smears that Basch did not even notice, as he cradled her in his arms and cupped her trembling chin.

'The Gods death, Fran, speak to me; what ails you?'

He dared not shake her but that restraint did not dispute his fear as her brows quivered, her eyes squeezed tightly closed, and her mouth opened and closed on silent gasps as her ears flickered with so much agitation that they smacked against his arm encircling her head.

Fran's eyes flew open and those jewel like ruby irises shimmered with quicksilver tears that tumbled without restraint down her cheeks as Basch could only stare, horrified and heart twisting in fear.

'……the Wood….I hear the cry….Golmore dies and Viera in the dark heart wait to share the doom…..my sisters….my sisters await their end and I so far...so far from them.'

Basch had no time to say anything in response, not that he had the words to say, before Fran once more drew in a rasping, tear laden breath, and closed her eyes on another deluge of tears that scarred the flawless, ageless, serenity of her face forever more.

'So long in silence I have dwelt yet now my punishment is meted out. I hear them die, my sisters all; exiled I am but their pain, in my ears, rings so loud.'

Gathering Fran into his arms, pressing her head to his shoulder, Basch could think of nothing else he could do except this one thing: hold her while she grieved.

* * *

'Here is the key but the key to the key is locked away.'

Marana pivoted on her tip-toes around and around the study, a biscuit in one hand and the waystone sphere cradled in the other against her chest.

'Here is the lie behind the magick……a wish of where one longs to be…..a web strung taut underfoot. The power is merely knowledge and the right teacher is the curse of enforced ignorance.'

Marana giggled obscenely as she bit off half the biscuit and began to masticate with enthusiasm.

As Larsa, Al-Cid, Penelo and Vaan watched in various displays of disconcerted befuddlement Marana danced towards the four Humes as the Waystone began to glow with the heat of a captive star.

'The trees are burning but the Wood remains; the ears are listening but the Wood has no words. The times are turning and Ivalice is whirling upon an axis of change. Here is not the place to be when all around things change and change is the thing.'

'Huh?' Vaan was the only one able to verbalise the collective statement as Marana abruptly threw the sphere in the general direction of where Vaan stood beside Larsa and Penelo with Al-Cid slightly adjacent and further away.

There was a flash of brilliant white light as Vaan reflexively reached out to catch the sphere and its light burned away all the shadows and distinction in the room; a moment later Al-Cid Margrace blinked the spots of brilliant after images from his eyes and discovered that Larsa, Penelo, Vaan and the Waystone were gone.

He swore in Rozzarian and turned startled, suspicious eyes on the cheerfully biscuit munching Gran Kiltias who sat neatly upon the loveseat kicking her feet like a girl.

Marana smiled with closed lips around a swallow of biscuit, 'All things to an end must come and all ends form doorways to new beginnings. Accounts must be balanced and lines drawn. The gods with feet of clay join hands with those who share their realm and the secret must be kept as a new foe is forged amid the ashes of the Wood.'

* * *

Basch had begun to wonder if both he and Fran and what was left of Cerobi might not be washed away in the flood of near sixty years of quiet, solid grief as Fran cried, not the tears of a hume, but the tears of one to whom such sorrow should not be known.

It seemed to Basch, as he stroked Fran's hair and rocked her gently in the cradle of his arms as he would for any dear friend that this must be what it looked like when goddesses wept; beautiful and desperate all at once.

All the while as Fran gave voice to a grief that cut his own heart to the very quick, Basch held her and knelt on his knees as Fran slumped against him her ears twitching and body shaking with the sounds of destruction he could not hear but doubted not was happening a place that Fran had held in reverence in her heart now matter how far she flew from Golmore's shadowed canopy.

As grief washed away the passing time Basch offered no words to the racking of her sobs, for he knew well enough that none could ever drown out the siren song of grief.

Time passed as it was want to do and slowly Fran's desperate crying settled into a slower shivering of grief. Her body stilling and her ears twitching only a little as, perhaps, the sounds dwindled or she simply lost the strength to feel that distant pain so deeply.

Basch was just considering trying to persuade Fran to come inside the suspect shelter of the half restored Strahl, when a glaring flash of retina scarring white light, that he initially thought was a flash of storm thunder, left him blinking back shards of shadow and light from his eyes.

'Oh gods, I think I'm going to be sick,'

Even Fran was shaken from her insular sorrow by this most familiar and unexpected voice. She pulled back from Basch as he looked up, more startled than he had been in a long while, to see Penelo white faced and wane, swoon in Lord Larsa's arms.

'What happened?'

Vaan, appeared just as inexplicably as the Archadian Emperor and Empress, and promptly dropped something white, spherical, and faintly glowing onto his own foot in his confusion and broke off from staring around stupidly to curse and hop on his uninjured foot.

Fran rose shakily to her feet and moved away from him. Basch followed suit staying solicitously close in case she once more succumbed to that which only her Viera senses could detect. He frowned down at the sphere.

'Is that not a waystone?'

* * *

Mjrn collapsed to her knees and many of her sisters Viera did also, when they reached the hidden heart of Golmore.

'It comes still; the Mist follows. Sister what are we to do?'

Jote turned slowly around to face her in the shadow of Golmore's black heart; the deep hollow of the great gnarled tree whose roots touched the very centre of the world amid the black and rich soil of all creation. All around the hot and fetid air of this most sacred place was a-quiver with the throb of Nature's beating heart.

A single tear from each calm eye slid down Jote's cheeks to merge under her sharp chin and drop to the black and loamy soil.

'Do, sister?' Jote shook her head. 'There is nothing; Viera of the Wood live and with the Wood die. It is the way.'

Mjrn could only stare up at her sister as her own tears painted her face with salty wetness that fell to nourish the parched heart of Golmore at the very culmination of the Green Way.

'Sister, Viera tend the Wood and nurture the Green Way. Viera are guardians of the Wood. How say you then that we do nothing?'

Jote's face was as hard and immutable as the ancient bark of Golmore's great trees, now burnt to grey ash and charcoal.

'Viera have failed in our duty; the Wood dies and Viera die as well. We are the ears of the Wood but heard not the warnings of this doom. Too many of our number from the Wood have strayed. Too few remain to hold to sacred duties. This doom is our reward for straying from the path.'

'But…?'

Jote turned her back from her sister and walked a short distance away, but even so there was little room to move here in the Heart of Golmore and Mjrn easily heard her elder sister's next words; a confession torn from the heart of the Viera Elder.

'Mjrn…..Golmore is dead and Viera will soon follow. Wish I do you had left with Fran. I would sooner have you live, though you be Viera no more, than be Viera in truth and die here.'

'Sister!' Mjrn struggled to her feet and rushed to her sister's side; never had she heard Jote speak so.

Slowly Jote turned and faced her younger, smaller sister, cupping her face in her long hand.

'All must pass from Nature's eye in time and 'tis now the season of Golmore's passing; Viera from Ivalice can never be secluded, know this now I do, too late to make remedy of the fact.'

Mjrn could feel fear clawing at her throat as Jote stepped forward and took her in firm embrace.

'Know this Mjrn and take heart; we have been Viera true and in good faith. We die as we have lived; one with the Wood.'

Mjrn shook violently, like a sapling in a storm, within her elder sister's embrace and strange conviction stole over her. She drew back from her sister.

'No sister.'

Mjrn said blinking the tears from her eyes, 'I have no will to die. I will not die here. Fran was right; Viera come from the Wood but it need not be our end.'

It was at that point that the Mist deluge breached the last barriers protecting the very cradle of Golmore and a white light, brighter than star fire, filled the dark hollow of the Wood's heart.

As Mrjn and Jote turned toward that light and the Mist wave rolled slowly forward, a figure emerged from the light; the Woods errant daughter returned to the fold with tears alight upon her cheeks.

'Fran!'

Mjrn broke first, as unsteady as a young foal on coltish legs, to fall at her lost sister's feet and weep for joy, but Fran had eyes only for Jote as she cradled a ball of light in one arm and extended the other.

'Sister let this not be Golmore's end. The trees may fall but the Wood need not.'


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter Thirty-Two: The Wood, the Trees, and the Third Crewman **

Nono peered into the curving surface of the glowing sphere upon its pedestal, whiskers twitching with a certain despondency.

'Kupo, re-calibration seven hundred and eighty two, result: a failure.'

'Kupo.'

Around the subterranean chamber a number of equally forlorn Moogles released deeply disappointed sighs, pom-pom plumes drooping as the complex apparatus, wires, filaments, cables, and tubes connected to the circle of six Waystones still cradled in their pedestals that had been quietly, secretly removed from their ancient homes in various ruins by this group of furtively industrious Moogles, powered down.

Nono turned to his brethren in the Moogle fraternity (and sorority) of Kupo, and lifted his chin defiantly. 'Re-calibration seven hundred and eight-three must begin forthwith.'

Without a murmur of dissent the forty or so Moogles who made up the Nalbina Chapter of the Ivalice wide Kupo Fraternity immediately raised tools, consulted flip-charts, adjusted valves and readied instruments.

Each one of these Moogles in someway or another owed fealty and friendship to the hume man known as Balthier (the only hume in a hundred years to be given the title of honorary Moogle for his tireless support of Moogle endeavours) and they were as ceaselessly dedicated to seeing him returned to life and liberty now as they had been six months ago when Nono called them all together.

Despite each Moogles dedication none was more determined to rescue Balthier than his crewman, personal assistant, and confidante, Nono; for Nono loved Balthier. It was not a love that Humes much understood and took the form of a soft focused but absolutely steel-cored devotion.

Nono cared for Balthier no less than Fran did, and had the Moogle and the reticent Viera ever seen fit to discuss the fact Fran would have discovered that the Moogle understood precisely why she had remained at Balthier's side even when he confused and irritated her, through thick and thin, because he felt the same way.

Balthier, both by accident and design, had been the key with which Nono had acquired his dreams; just as he had become an anchor and purpose for Fran.

For Nono the impetus to save Balthier was gratitude magnified one thousand fold mixed with mutual respect. After all when eleven years ago Nono had, purely by chance, chosen to stow away in the Strahl as a tradeless, Gil-less Moogle with dreams too big for he alone to attain, Nono could never have dreamed that just over a decade later he would be the head of a philanthropic Moogle based Ivalice-wide organisation with some seven thousand accredited members (they even had badges – Nono had been very pleased with that innovation).

Now, brandishing the trusty spanner that Balthier had handed to him all those years ago ('just try not to break anything too expensive' – he had said leaving Nono to discover an innate skill as a machinist that would have remained dormant else-wise) Nono approached the large blue faceted Crystal held in a firm tripod strut in the centre of the secret workroom and hemmed in by the cord lashed Waystones.

Stealing the huge Crystal (which towered over the heads of all the Moogles present) had been a feat in and of itself.

Humes had funny superstitions about the protrusions of Magicite that broke from the ground in certain areas of Ivalice; they called them 'save crystals' and claimed that they were the eyes of the gods, used by those deities to record and view the everyday goings on of their faithful hume subjects. Moogles, in general were a race not that concerned over the prospect or presence of the divine, found the superstition strange and, if nothing else, it made stealing one of the revered lumps of rock from under the noses of the Humes surprisingly difficult.

It had taken Nono two months (in which he should have been rescuing Balthier – and Nono had not appreciated the delay at all) to strike up an acquaintance with a Baknamy trader who knew where a crystal lurked in the Nabreus Deadlands. A further six weeks (and fifty thousand Gil worth of Balthier's accumulated fortune) later Nono and the Baknamy (whose name was Bells and Whistles) and his fellow members of the Fraternity had acquired the all important crystal.

Reaching out one tiny, furred white paw Nono stroked the smooth, multi-faceted face of the blue glass-like crystal's surface. It was a terrible shame that Fran had taken the portable Waystone to the Gran Kiltias, but as she was doing so under Master Balthier's written instruction, Nono accepted the inconvenience and soldiered on.

One of the other members of the Fraternity, who was in fact a sister Moogle, and in the light of day away from these clandestine endeavours known as Sister Minty, nurse-maid to the royal children of Dalmasca, waddled over.

'Kupo, there is something happening, Master Nono, sir.'

Pointing an oil and grease stained downy paw in the direction of the Waystone circle Nono immediately saw that the orbs were pulsing dimly with a fluctuating light.

Around the circle of six Waystones first the left most stone in the circle would shudder with a distant, faint, white light before fading into cool grey dormancy as the Waystone next to it pulsed with light and then faded out and that dull radiance jumped around the circle from one orb to another.

Around the room (a secret chamber deep hidden in the former dungeons under Nalbina Keep) the gathered Moogles chattered with excitement and consulted their notes, read-outs, and calculations while checking the devices with suddenly animated expressions and vigour.

Nono, alongside Minty, turned back to the blue crystal which had begun to chime with a high pitched whine and had started to vibrate within the tight grip of the metal struts holding it firmly in place.

Within the heart of the ice blue crystal light and energy started to swirl like ink mixed with water and the crystal's many facets reflected the fire light of glaciers in shades of mauve and midnight blue, cold greens, and shimmering greys.

'Kupo, kupo, Master Nono, It's working!' Impulsively Minty grasped Nono's paw in her own and Nono, beaming after six long months of failure, began to hop from foot to foot before the crystal.

'Master Balthier's portable Waystone – it's being used; that's the difference. The key was not in the lock, and now it is.' Nono broke off his dance and turned to his loyal fraternity members.

'Kupo! Kupo! Quickly-quick now; we can't lose the flow! This is our chance; Master Balthier is counting on us, Kupo!'

Light, white and singing, began to spill through the glass tubes and cables strung from one Waystone pedestal to another and dripped along snaking wires across the packed earth and soil floor of the dank cellar in the dungeons.

The wires fed into the tripod holding the crystal and, shuddering with energy transference and sympathetic nuances of life essence, the crystal drank in that light, emitting a high squealing whistling that rattled the spare glass tubing lined up against the walls.

As the Moogles flitted about the apparatus, a hive of purposeful, organised but frenetic activity, the fast swirling energy and light within the crystal's heart began to coalesce and form the vague outline of a hume form; a curved back and legs curled up and arms tucked in, the pale gleam of white, furless flesh, only to then, in agonising anti-climax, collapse back into the disparate colours and dancing motes of life's raw essence.

'More power Kupo! We must have more power!'

Nono cried as he and Minty and a number of other Moogles not needed to monitor the Waystones rushed over to the Mist generators and modified small airship engines that they had 'acquired' for their purposes and began to lay at them with spanners and assorted tools.

Within the heart of the crystal a ghostly hand, more the memory of a hand then any construct of flesh or blood, pressed against the inside of the crystal and strained to be free and living once more. The brilliant, thematic jolts of light from the shuddering Waystones cast harsh shadows of white and black dancing across the room.

Nono, spotting the hand pressed against the inside of the crystal that was already dissolving into the filaments of thought and soul that was all that currently existed of the man, rushed over to the crystal and pressed his whiskered white furred face to the outer surface.

'Master Balthier, do not worry Kupo, we'll have you out of there in no time!'

And it was a true promise, so long as whoever was using the portable Waystone continued to do so, and continued to do so in a place suitably close enough to the Pharos.

Nono did not know who had guessed what needed to be done to free his master, but then he did not really care; all that mattered was that whoever they were they did not stop.

Master Balthier's life depended on it.

* * *

'Er, so I understand why Marana wanted Fran to go save the Viera, but why did we have to come here?'

Vaan asked for the umpteeth time as he kicked pebbles into the water that lapped at his boots on the edges of the Cerobi Steppes. Penelo, sitting on the lowered boarding ramp of the under-repair Strahl, did not bother to answer him as she sat with head almost between her knees fighting nausea. Larsa hovered protectively by her side looking awkwardly uncomfortable.

Basch, for his part, continued to pace back and forth further down the makeshift shore looking out to sea from time to time and trying not to think on Fran's plight. She had left so suddenly, seizing up the Waystone and activating its unknown Magicks before any of the rest of them could react.

It did not make Basch any more at ease with the situation to know that the dangerously peculiar Gran Kiltias Marana had been the catalyst for Lord Larsa, Penelo and Vaan's, too timely to be accidental, arrival. It worried Basch that a woman-child who seemed to know so much of import about so many things, not least the movements of the Occuria, also seemed to delight in playing her cards so close to her chest.

Much like an ex-pirate he used to know, Basch found himself thinking darkly, as looking out beyond the rolling grey ocean veldt towards the storm tossed horizon he thought he espied a large piece of debris bobbing up and down upon the waves.

'I mean, Marana can see the future, right? So there must be some reason she sent us here, right to where Fran and Basch were.'

Vaan continued waving his arms about for emphasis as he splashed through the shallows, 'After all, if she used the Waystone to get to Archades she could have just magicked herself right to Fran; she didn't even need to make us come here.'

Penelo lifted her head, beginning to feel a little better, 'Vaan's right. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing.'

Instinctively she looked to her husband for his thoughts. Larsa was staring off towards the higher climbs of the Steppes, where the ancient windmills turned in the twisting breeze, and frowning a little.

'Yes, I think you are right. Before, her Grace Marana referred to the Waystone as the 'key' but then stated that the 'key to unlock the key' was locked away.'

Speculatively Larsa ran a hand over the battered, paint peeling hull of the Strahl, 'Balthier altered the Waystone Sphere we used to get here, through unknown means to make it potable. The only other being who knew how he did so is the Moogle Nono, who rather conveniently, has not been seen or heard from since Balthier's own disappearance.'

Basch, who had been trying to define with squinted eyes, whether the piece of debris came from some manner of ship, and what it was made off, as it seemed to be catching the weak sunlight breaking through the ever-present storm clouds, in glints and slivery shivers, now turned back to the conversation.

'Aye, Fran said she thought it likely that Balthier had given Nono instructions to make himself scarce should he disappear and the Waystone be discovered. She thinks it likely that Nono is waiting for Balthier's return somewhere no hume will know to find him.'

Larsa frowned thoughtfully, 'And she made no efforts to find him either? I would think that Fran would be most likely to know where Nono would hide.'

Basch merely shrugged, 'Fran's loyalty is to Balthier first and foremost, she'll abide by his edicts even in his absence.'

'So you think Balthier made this Waystone because he knew the Occuria were coming?'

Vaan stopped kicking at crushed seashells that had become embedded in the fresh wet mud and silt, to look between Larsa's pensive frown and Basch's carefully neutral expression.

Larsa walked forward away from the Strahl to look out across the waters to where, invisible to the naked eye, the distant, dark clouds forming where once the Pharos stood.

'I think that _Venat_ would have done, and we have no way of knowing what the renegade Occuria achieved in terms of countering her brethren's ambitions, while in Balthier's guise. In fact we have no way of knowing how much of our recent history is because Venat inhabited Balthier's mind and body.'

'Aye,' Basch walked from the shoreline towards the group. The lord Larsa had hit upon his own fears, which had bubbled under for the last six months since Marana had revealed the truth of Balthier's possession. 'That is the question.'

Could it be merely coincidence that the son of Dr Cid, Venat's co-conspirator, had married and produced children with the Dynast Queen, last scion of the Occuria's great designs?

Basch was a veteran soldier and he knew that the way to defeat an enemy in war was to turn his own weapons against him. So, Basch had been left to ponder in the aftermath of the Turning, who was playing whom?

An uncomfortable silence fell upon their unlikely gathering as everyone, in his and her own way, pondered everything that had happened and might soon happen, and the waves of this new sea continued to lap against the steppe, divulging the detritus of a once thriving and vibrant port upon the dirty shore.

After a little while Vaan flopped down by the waters edge and began to pull little bits and pieces out of the murk of liquid black mud, and Penelo, uncomfortable about being here at all, wandered over and began to help him for no other purpose than it was something to do.

Basch resumed his uncharacteristic pacing, unable to keep his mind from Fran any longer.

With every moment that she failed to return his anxiety only grew; he understood that this was something she must do for herself, that she needed to do for herself, and that the presence of Humes would only make her task all the harder, but understand did nothing to counter his deep fear for her.

His heart thumped heavy in his chest with worry for Fran and set a sympathetic quiver through his soul as he longed to for nothing more than to see her returned safe and sound.

* * *

'Sister let this not be Golmore's end. The trees may fall but the Wood need not.'

Jote stared coldly at the outreaching hand, 'To me you say this? Is this not the work of the Humes you abandoned your kith and kin to serve?'

Her long fingers slashed the humid, pungent air of the Heart of Golmore. The light from the Waystone casting all in monochrome shafts of light and shadow as Jote's long fingers struck out at the destruction and despair palpable all around.

Fran quietly shook her head, 'No sister. This time the threat comes not _from_ the humes but _to_ them, and all who dwell upon Ivalice soil.'

The Viera survivors shifted nearer, listening intently even as the poison mist began to pool at the roots of the great Golmore's Heart tree. Viera knew that Viera did not, and could not, lie to each other; even exiles were not so lost that the hume deceit could infect them. Ears twitched as the last of Eruyt turned to Jote.

'Fran does not lie. If a threat to Golmore be, should not the Viera face it?'

Jote closed her eyes and shook her head, 'Of the Wood are Viera true; no place for us away from here.'

Fran stepped forward, and it seemed as though the very poison wave of the Mist held its peace for the time it took one sister to speak heartfelt words to another, 'You are right Jote; so long I have walked the Hume ways, and know I do too well, that Viera without Wood are not complete.'

Jote opened her eyes, something like hope glimmering there, 'So you return to us, sister, return to Wood to share our doom as Viera once more?'

Fran shook her own head, 'No. it is possible to live incompletely and still know joy which Viera who want for nothing can never know. I am too much myself and alone now within, to lay down life and limb for that which is no more dead and dying than I be.' A thread of defiance twined in her words as she addressed her elder sibling.

'Sister?' Mjrn rose to her feet too fast and stumbled. A ripple of similar confusion and burgeoning hope passed over the gathered Viera.

Fran remained calm with her back to the Mist wave facing the sister that she had always been at odds with.

'I know our history well, sister, though know it less well than you. Golmore is not the first Wood of Viera. Once our forebears travelled here from that which is now hume run Rozzaria.'

Jote's head jerked up and her eyes narrowed with sudden anger, as quick and fierce as a thunder clap, or a gale through a copse of trees, 'You, who discard our ways and abandon the Green Way, would speak of Viera past to me?'

'Yes sister, I do.' Fran walked away from Jote to look beyond the opening of the hollow in the gigantic, knotted, trunk of the heart tree.

'Viera were born to be the ears and the arms of the Wood. We were born to listen _to_ Wood and _for_ the Wood. But the Wood is of Ivalice, sister, and how can Viera close ears to Ivalice but remain true to the purpose of our birth?'

'The Mist! The Mist it comes!'

The Viera nearest the bottom of the great tree ran up the winding paths, woven like runnels into the outer bark, panic and fear naked upon their faces. The Mist, a roiling sea of blue and green striated with streaks of orange and scarlet lightening seemed to seep upwards with all the languid ease of pained inevitability.

Fran turned back from watching the trees beyond the ancient chasm that formed a moat all around the heart tree, burning and crumbling to cinders. She met her elder sister's eyes.

'Viera walk the Green Way, but once the Way was vast. All Ivalice was Viera path and Golmore was no more than trees in a world of forest. Viera are not mere servants of the Wood; in your hands is power to find old paths anew.'

Mjrn looked between her two elder sisters, caught betwixt and between them just as she always had been. She turned to Jote, 'What does the Wood say sister?'

The question was taken up by the other Viera who clamoured hopelessly for her to speak to the Wood and hear the answer of the Green Way. Jote shook her head sharply.

'The Wood screams in my ears; no answer save death is answer to all Viera.' Jote raised her red-rimmed garnet eyes to her sister's and Fran gazed back impassively.

For the first time in sixty years, if not longer Fran faced her elder sister with the strength of more than conviction and burning curiosity. Now it was Fran who knew an answer Jote did not, Fran who stood with strength in the face of danger.

'How can the Wood answer when all the Wood knows is the voice of silence? Viera hear nothing save the Wood and thus speak nothing at all to Wood save that which Wood first spoke.'

Fran spoke the words that had burned in her throat, unspoken, unheard, a canker of confusion and frustration that had forced Fran from her home and the stifling weight of ignorance and insular fear that had for so long threatened to be the death of Viera, more truly than any mere fire.

As the Mist wound about the lowest reaches of the heart tree, sinuously winding about the pathways and walkways of the Viera to ease its insidious passage, Jote began to tremble, from proud head to unsteady toes.

Silence, broken only by the imagined sound of the Mist devouring bark and root and foliage that had stood for centuries, reigned for countless seconds and then, desolate and broken, Jote dropped to her knees.

'Viera to the Wood must remain. Viera without Wood are no longer Viera; worse than humes we shall be.' she wept brokenly. The Wood had failed Viera and Viera had failed Wood. To Jote all was lost.

A warm hand, that was shaped as Viera hands are shaped, but held the lingering scent of Hume science and strange hume chemicals and the tang of metal, tentatively touched Jote's shoulder as Fran crouched before her.

'Once you did tell me that the Wood did mourn me; that Wood missed her wandering daughters Viera and would embrace their return.'

'There is no Wood.' Jote's voice was harsh, guttural as the first tendrils of cloying Mist reached above the low defensive branches and poked and scraped at the air below the entrance to the Viera hollow.

Fran's hand gripped tighter to her older sister, 'There is always the Wood; I, who have made home for self in the Hume warrens of metal and Mist, have seen this truth, though Wood's paths are lost to me.'

Jote lifted her head as Mjrn dropped down beside her and the Mist, acrid, sickly sweet, and mildewed, began to seep into the hollow and the sisters Viera began to moan and shake and weep.

'Sister let Fran speak onto the Wood. Let our sister speak of all she has seen. We have no path to follow; perhaps Fran, walker of other Wood paths in all Ivalice, does come to show we faithful of Golmore to a new way?'

Jote stared into the eyes of the youngest of her sisters as the Mist burned their throats and filled their eyes with dazzling, spiralling colours. In her ears she heard the death throes of all she had ever known and believed in. Closing her eyes she clasped in her hands the hand of one sister and then the other.

She nodded and the Mist descended upon the Viera hollow.


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter Thirty-Three: The Octopus Made of Sand and the Constitution of Man**

_A/N: Double update; if you are just clicking on please do not miss the preceding chapter ;)_

* * *

Once again Basch looked out over the waters and noticed that the large piece of debris from the destruction of Balfonheim that bobbed over the surface of the sea had floated closer to the shore. It now drifted about in the shadow of the rusting dome of the aerodrome. Something about the drifting detritus of Balfonheim's fall made him squint at it once more…….it almost appeared as if it was made of glass, or if not glass, then…. crystal?

A tremendous flash of light at his back had Basch turning sharply on his heels to face inland, hand reaching for a weapon he no longer wore as a matter of course at his belt.

Standing in a copse of trees a few feet away from the restive Strahl stood two dozen, dazed and confused, Viera in various states of ill-health.

'Fran!'

Penelo leapt up from the shoreline, her green and tourmaline skirts spattered with salt water and mud, and immediately ran towards the weakest of the Viera with hands already glowing with healing fire.

Basch, too, moved swiftly forward to where Fran stood with her elder and younger sisters. Yet Basch could not form sounds to speak around the lump in his throat and the clamour of his heart as it crested with joy to see Fran alive and unscathed, before she held aloft the wildly pulsing Waystone and vanished in a brilliant blaze of vision scoring whiteness.

Blinking back the after-shocks revealed that Jote and Mjrn still stood under the trees of Cerobi. It was Jote who stepped forward to greet them, addressing herself first to Larsa.

'You are one who commands Humes?' she queried in the same strangely exotic but imperious tone Basch still remembered from ten years ago when the Princess Ashe's (as she was then) party had invaded the sanctity of Eruyt's solitude.

Larsa, who had been present during that visit, nodded gravely and performed a neat Archadian bow.

'And you are Jote, leader of the Golmore Viera. My name is Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, Emperor of Archadia, and I am gratified to see that the Viera of Golmore are alive and well.'

Jote stared him down, tall, stately and unforgiving just as Basch remembered. Her beautiful face as hard and closed, indicative of a mindset as inflexible as Fran's was open and reasonable and then, much to Basch's shock, Jote turned her head and looked to Mjrn, as if for guidance.

The younger of Fran's sisters, who Basch had felt had much the same temperament as Fran herself, though none of her innate confidence and quiet assurance, nevertheless nodded with obvious encouragement to her elder sister, tacitly asking her to continue to speak with the lord Larsa.

Jote was speaking once more as she turned back to fix Larsa with keen, but no longer hostile, eyes.

'Viera live but are without Wood and shelter. Our sister speaks to us of Mist danger that warps the land. We hear of the Occuria, false gods of Mist, that would make all Ivalice in their image enchained?'

Larsa nodded gravely, 'Your sister knows of what she speaks.'

Almost anxiously Larsa then took a tentative step forward, eyes taking in the Mist sickened Viera that Penelo and Vaan tended to on the rolling ground of Cerobi.

'I must stress that no member of my country, or of any nation in the Alliance of Ivalice, was privy in advance to the attack on Golmore. Had we known we would have moved to protect your home, as we would our own.'

Jote's ears quivered as if shocked by this notion, and by the sincerity therein; she cocked her head to the side speculatively, 'Alliance of Ivalice?'

Larsa nodded, 'It is the name of a confederation of nations, including Archadia, Dalmasca and the Rozzarian Democracies, that have come together to put war and petty rivalries aside and face the Turning with united front. It was the initiative of her Majesty the Lady Ashe.'

Jote shared another complicated glance with Mjrn who moved up beside her sister on her right side, 'This alliance? Humes do make its numbers?'

Larsa smiled, sensing in the open curiosity of the question exactly why Marana had seen fit to maroon him here, in anticipation of the Viera coming. All things were changing in Ivalice just as she had predicted; the Occuria surely could not have foreseen the result of their unprovoked attack on the Viera, or that a new ally of the Alliance might spring from it.

'Humes yes, but also Baknamy, Moogles, Helgas, and representatives of all the races of Ivalice that either hold positions of power within those signatory nations of the Alliance, or represent the unique stance of their race in other ways.'

'Viera?' Jote asked keenly, 'Do Viera stand within the Alliance against the Occuria? Those who would turn the burning Mist on ancient Wood?' Anger, bright and sharp edged with still weeping grief, flavoured and accented her harsh words.

Larsa swallowed his smile while slowly, carefully, and with utmost solemnity, extending his hand, 'I believe, honoured Jote of the Viera, that would be for you to decide.'

* * *

'No, I'm sorry Heios, but you are too young.'

'But Mother, I am five now.'

Ashe sat slouched forward in her chair with her elbows on the table top in a very un-queen like pose, a mound of desert sand piled before her and a variety of twists of coloured twine and squares of bright red cotton scattered about.

Hallie, kneeling on her haunches in her chair next to Ashe, continued to gather fistfuls of sand and ferried it, inexpertly, over to the square of cotton before her that had already had eight lengths of twine carefully stitched, by Ashe herself, onto it.

Before the miniature mountain of sand was a collection of red sacks filled up with sand and multi-coloured bits of twine dangling like limp legs from the rounded bases of the bags. Hallie had drawn, with a thick ink pen, grimaces onto the bags that to her represented the snarling faces of half a dozen bright red Octopus'.

'No, Heios, you cannot start wearing brocade vests. You are too young.' Ashe reiterated as Heios's face contorted into an expression of acute annoyance.

'But mother!' he wailed, stamping his foot and crossing his arms over his loose cotton vested chest. 'Father said that he was given his first proper gentleman's vest when he was five; he said he would take me to the tailor on my birthday.'

Hallie, quiet and solemn still despite the presence of Mr Bubbles, nose snuffling as he sat neatly in the chair beside her, looked over at her brother, 'Father is not here, Heios.'

Heios, who was not to be gain-sayed, barely glanced at his sister, 'That is why I am asking mother.' He pointed out with a fair amount of disdain for such a young child.

He looked so like his father in his pique that Ashe was almost tempted to relent and let him have his impossibly tight, leather and string-bound vest like his father's habitual wear.

She sighed; beyond Dalmasca's borders all Ivalice was in despair. She had received the gabbled reports from her scouts abroad that there was a huge column of smoke rising from the Kerwon and Golmore region but, with the Mist Storms making radio communication almost impossible and grounding all airships, there was nothing she could do.

She did not even know if Vaan had safely arrived in Archades, and feeling helpless in her role as Queen, Ashe had turned her attentions to the role of mother.

'Heios, what would you prefer, for me to have my tailors make you a light-weather vest, or to wait until your father returns and go to his tailor, instead?'

Heios bit his lip (and that was most definitely a habit he had gained from her) he seemed caught in a quandary. He wanted his 'gentleman's vest' but at the same time, going to the tailor with Balthier was a performance and adventure in and of itself that he did not want to miss out on.

'But what if father does not come back for ages, mother? What if I am already _six _before he comes home?'

Hallie lifted her head from her careful work on the jagged teethed maw of her latest sand octopus and turned large eyes, ready to fill with tears once more, to her mother.

'Father will be home before then, won't he mother?'

For children of five, tomorrow was a lifetime away and a year was an incomprehensible amount of time; Ashe sighed as she continued to sew twine legs on the cotton octopus she was making. 'Of course he will. Heios, we will talk about this later, now come and help your sister and I make octopus for our battle.'

Hallie's terror of octopus had only grown in recent weeks. Almost every night she woke screaming in terror convinced that there was an octopus in her bed, trying to pull her deep under the ground (Hallie's understanding of precisely what an Octopus was and did, was as confused as one might expect of a girl who lived in a desert). This had had the effect of making her deathly afraid of either going to sleep or bathing.

Coupled with Hallie's habit of bed-wetting the problem was fast getting out of hand.

Ashe had decided to battle this fear head on; she was a firm believer in facing and battling ones own demons, thus, the creation of a sandbag octopus army that she, Hallie and Heios would soon vanquish.

Hallie needed to feel as if she had some control over her fear and by the gods Ashe was going to give it to her even if they ended up dusting sand out of the carpets and tapestries for months to come.

Moments of industrious silence went by and the mound of sand shrank as the ranks of the sandbag octopus army grew in number.

'Do we have enough now Mother?' Heios asked, still a little put out about the vest issue, as he poked one of the sack Octopus lightly with one of the pencil spears Ashe and Hallie had prepared earlier.

Ashe turned to her sad and uncharacteristically quiet little girl and squeezed her arm, gently, 'Well, sweeting, do you think that is enough?'

Soberly Hallie shifted through the pile of octopus, and then nodded grimly, 'Yes mother; it's time for war.'

* * *

The Waystones were almost sparking and the luminance was too great to look upon directly as the crystal in the centre of Nono's secret workshop began to resonate like the tolling of a huge bell, flashing lightening glacial colours in every facet.

'It's working, it's working, it's working!'

Minty chanted at his side as Nono cranked up the engines powering his apparatus and watched the first cracks begin to form in the outer shell of the crystal, as within, fists beat against the sides.

'Kupokupokupo…..we need more power! More power Kupo!'

The cords and cables laid out across the floor seared with a blue-white heat that left scorch marks across the hard packed soil of the root cellar as they lashed together, almost alive with the energy that coursed through them.

There was a bright snap and tinkle of glass as a hume fist, nails torn and bloodied, punched through the crystal, writhed in Mist and vapour as wet, glistening white skin felt the air for the first time in months.

The hand, still wearing a gaudy metallic ring double-banded with stripes of blue and pink, stretched out its fingers and reached for freedom.

'More power!' Nono screamed.

* * *

After the third teleportation from Golmore to Balfonheim Fran could make no more journeys; she was sick and shivering from the Mist and Basch forcibly took the Waystone from her weak grip.

'Enough Fran; there is no more you can do. You have done enough.'

Arrayed about her feet were an assortment of roots, branches, seedlings and saplings, that Fran had torn free of the grip of the ravaging Mist wave and rescued from Golmore; it occurred to Basch that the small pile of bedraggled flora was all that remained of the once great and forbidding jungle.

Throwing aside the Waystone so that it rolled, still pulsing faintly in intermittent bursts, down the banks of the Cerobi to the edge of the shoreline, discarded. He clasped Fran's shoulders in his hands and met her tired, worn gaze.

'It is enough, now.'

He said gently, and hoped that she would know that he understood what it was to want, more than his next breath, to atone for failures and give his blood, sweat, and tears, to see a tragedy averted. Fran blinked at him and then to his immense surprise rested her sweat slicked brow against his shoulder and released a long held breath.

Mjrn, coltish and filled with a strangely atypical wide-eyed nervousness for the Viera, came over and began to sort knowledgeably through the roots, seed pods, and plant cuttings that Fran had salvaged.

She smiled, 'These are good, sister, the Mist has not tainted them.'

Mjrn gathered up some of the sapling roots and wandered off to where some of the other Viera had already begun to investigate the undergrowth and standing trees with a view to settling.

Basch could not help but marvel at the way the Viera, a people who had shunned and feared engagement with life outside the confines of their Wood for decades, now seemed to take their new surroundings in stride, and his eyes glanced over to where Larsa was involved in deep discussion with the imposing Jote.

'I spoke, the words long held on my tongue, frozen for fear of being heard,' Fran murmured against his shoulder, drawing back to meet Basch's eyes. For the first time, as she did so, he saw the sheen in hers was not exhaustion but something else, something that he had never seen before.

'I spoke to the Heart of Golmore, and in the hour of the Wood's passing the Green Way did open to me.'

A look of pure wonder, of subtle vindication, and transcendent relief, danced over her face and to Basch, she had never looked more beautiful.

'I was heard, by Wood and Green Way, exiled no longer, I came home to lead Viera to a new path. Ivalice is vast and Golmore is not the only Wood.'

She all but whispered voice soft and hoarse due to the Mist she had been exposed too and her own exhaustion. Basch closed his arms around her.

'You saved them Fran; your duty is done.' Basch murmured looking out towards the distant darkening clouds of the Pharos.

The strange object he had noted any number of times before, borne on the lapping waves, was drifting closer and closer to the banks of the Steppe, catching the sunlight in harsh prisms, and finally Basch thought he recognised it.

'Umm, hey, should the Waystone being doing that?'

Vaan's slightly anxious question attracted both Viera and Hume attention, as he stood not far from the shore and pointed to the Waystone, ignored and discarded in the thick black silt.

As those gathered, sensing that something was afoot, turned to face the Waystone, which was sending strobe flashes of light in unforgiving blades through the air, Basch found his eyes turning towards the huge crystal that was only a few feet from the shoreline now.

It was Basch's long honed instincts that saved them all, throwing himself across Fran, he yelled: 'DOWN!'

From the crystalline shell of its prison, Mateus the Corrupt erupted from the waters of the advancing, hungry, Naldoa Ocean and spears of ice shot into the air as the water froze about the fish-like body of Balthier's personal Esper.

Leaping, huge muscular tail beating at the air, Mateus rose twenty feet up and was framed for a moment by the lightening tossed horizon out to sea, before the creature folded in on itself and dived straight for the blazing beacon of the Waystone.

_At last my master, we are free._

The voice of Mateus echoed, cold and greedily victorious, through all their minds as all those gathered on the shore could only watch, dumb-founded, as the Esper disappeared in the halo of light emitted from the Waystone.

White light, brighter and more painful to the eyes than a million bolts of lightening, swallowed the Cerobi Steppe in cold radiance and the rapacious vacuum of the Waystone supernova absorbed Basch, Vaan, Fran, Larsa and Penelo into its gaping white maw.

The Viera, once of Golmore, were left blinking back lights shadows and alone on the banks of Cerobi; far out to sea a tempest was brewing and a cage, now escaped, fell in on itself.

* * *

'Kupokupokupokupo……it's working, it's working, it's working!'

Moogles in the workshop had turned from over-heating, smouldering apparatus to watch as one by one the current of energy that made up the soul and essence of the man who was known as Balthier, shot from Waystone to Waystone and the orbs shattered in a shower of eldritch dust and glass.

They all heard the cackle of cold laughter as Mateus, tied to Balthier so long that the Esper had become a part of his psyche, broke free of the crystal prison the Occuria had placed the Esper in, and rejoined its host.

With Mateus accounted for the last piece of the man: body, mind, spirit, and soul was once more in place. All across Ivalice had the Occuria displaced the constituent pieces of both Balthier and Venat, separating mind from body and soul from spirit, imprisoning each piece in a separate crystal; a prison of multiple parts designed to prevent any hume from freeing him.

Until now, when the diligence of some forty odd Moogles and the cunning manipulation of the Helgas Gran Kiltias had found a means not only to re-constitute the leading man, but also, to do it under the cover of an entirely different rescue mission.

With a harsh crack of crystalline glass another bloodied fist punched its way through the faceted ore as the rock of raw magicite split at its core and broke in twain. A body, thin, wracked with choking coughs, soaked in ocean water and caked in seaweed, collapsed across the hard packed floor of the cellar.

Smoke and Mist and errant sparks popped and hissed through the room as nary a Moogle did make a murmur as Nono carefully advanced upon the gasping, retching hume form clawing blindly at the floor and twitching in the shock of being dragged through the corridors of creation itself back into his own flesh and blood.

'Master Balthier?'

Nono tremulously skirted a little closer and a pair of wild, dark eyes fixed on him with burning heat. Too fast even for the Moogle to avoid a hand shot out and grasped Nono by the front of his neat green overalls.

'………fish….' The voice rasped out, mangled and maligned between a gasping sputter of blood flecked sputum, '…….so many…….fish…….'

The hand slipped from Nono's clothing as the eyes shuttered closed and the body, wheezing unhealthily, slumped into unconsciousness.

The leading man, for good or ill, was back.


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter Thirty-Four: Confluence and Culmination Part 2: Hmmm, things could be worse**

Nalbina was a city of activity; compact and crowded most of the city's populace wedged themselves into any number of improbably cramped lodgings packed higgledy-piggledy and cheek by jowl within the high, cannon pitted stone walls of the Fortress Keep. This was not because of lack of space on the slopes of Nalbina Hill, but because of choice.

A family of twelve would sooner squeeze themselves into two rooms in a building that housed a Moogle workshop in the basement, a leatherworks on the ground floor, and a carpenters on the top floor, than build a suitably apportioned house outside the city walls, because as every Nalbinese knew, inside the walls of the Keep was where the action was.

Nalbina was loud, riotously busy and exceedingly ugly; the city filled with misshapen buildings which sprouted from the sides of the great walls or from the lower floors of the repaired Keep like fungus, and over a decade since Nalbina was over-run by the Empire, the signs of cannonade wounds, burned masonry, and bullet holes was still in evidence.

The Nalbinese took the view that if they wanted beauty, culture, and peaceful reflection, they could simply take the Barheim Chocobo Express to Rabanastre. However, the Nalbinese cared for only two things, in general, and those were making Gil and simply making _things._

Even in the days before the occupation, when Nalbina had been as much a Nabradian city as it was a Dalmascan one, Nalbina had been a centre of production. It was the place where the artisans rubbed shoulders with the brewers and the Usurers, the Chocobo dealers and the butchers, and this had not changed over much in the ensuing years. The difference _now_ was that these days Nalbina was interested in producing _ideas_ alongside the other, more mundane, necessities of life.

Once upon a time a Dalmascan who fancied themselves a visionary, or a would-be inventor, would either have to sell their souls to one of the two empires of Ivalice, Rozzaria to the west and Archadia to the east, or travel to Bhujerba in order to realise those aspirations.

All that had changed, much to the delight of impoverished inventors throughout Dalmasca, when the Master Balthier had sauntered into Nalbina town with two hundred and fifty thousand Gil in a dozen canvas sacks, a smile and a wink and the promise to turn Nalbina into the production capital of Ivalice.

The Nalbina of 715 (Old Valendian) styled itself a city of production, commerce, and the vibrant exchange of ideas. The Aerodrome, when the renovations were complete, would be the most advanced in all Ivalice. The Guild of Moogle Machinists, which occupied an entire floor of the Keep and was run by no less a personage than the master machinist Nono, was always open to all comers and all races who wished to learn new skills and exchange new ideas and the Office of Patents had a crystal light burning in its window morning, noon, and dead of night.

Yes, the more open minded of Nalbinese might concede if pressed, there was also a thriving black market and counterfeiting trade working unobtrusively within the city walls, and yes, it was noticeable that the Nalbinese Council (who were in the pocket of a renowned former sky pirate, counterfeiter, and black marketer) was slow to lift a finger against the criminal element of the city, but for the most part the upstanding citizenry did not care.

It was well known that every criminal in the city operated with the full knowledge and consent of Master Balthier and Master Balthier (and his Gil) could do no wrong in the eyes of the Nalbinese.

Thus it was, in the city that did not sleep, that five people were ejected, none too gently, from the golden brown Crystal in a quiet wynd near the east facing city walls in full view of the sleepless denizens of Nalbina.

The Nalbinese, who had a general disinterest in anything that did not hold the shine of Gil or have multiple mechanical parts, barely reacted when the Emperor of Archadia performed a mid-air (completely unintentional) somersault into a conveniently placed hayrick.

They raised a mild eyebrow of vague interest when the Empress (who was held in much higher esteem as she was a good, honest _Dalmascan_ girl) rolled head over heels across the dirty cobbles and came to a dazed halt in the middle of the street.

The busy Nalbinese could barely muster the attention to titter with amusement as no less a personage than former Captain Basch Fon Ronsenberg skidded on his back across the cobbles only to have the (pleasure) of a leggy Viera land on top of him and the decidedly less stimulating misfortune of having the Lady Ashe's Captain land on top of the Viera creating a hume-Viera sandwich with Fon Ronsenberg stuck at the bottom.

For a moment the Nalbinese present in the wynd looked to the throbbing Crystal expectantly, but when it seemed that no more people were going to be spat out of the Crystal's Mist swirled and multi-faceted centre, they turned back to the wares in the midnight market without comment.

The five unfortunate travellers lifted their heads slowly and staggered to their feet. Penelo stumbled over to help a particularly dazed Larsa out of the hayrick.

'Huh, Nalbina.'

Vaan, who, having had the benefit of landing on two of his comrades, was the least winded or disturbed by the journey, looked about him at the midnight market, the keen-eyed peddlers of barely legal wares, and the brightly coloured awnings over the rickety stalls, with recognition and a certain satisfaction to be home.

'What in the name of all the gods just happened?' Penelo demanded her Ivalice-renowned sweet nature and patience straining against a wave of nausea after a second Ivalice-spanning mystical jaunt.

Larsa, who was not feeling much better after falling face first into a rick of dirty hay, stopped trying to brush hay stems off his clothes and out of his hair, and licked his lips pensively.

'I have no idea, however the fact that we have ended up in Nalbina cannot be coincidence. I suggest we make for the Keep and hope someone there will be able to get word to the Lady Ashe.'

Fran, who was still tired from her exploits saving Golmore and her Viera kin from the Occuria Mist wave, allowed Basch to help her to her feet and looked narrowly at the suspiciously quiet crystal.

'The Waystone is gone, destroyed when Mateus passed through it, into the vortex of that power we too were drawn, that we come here, to Balthier's seat, is like as not to be of import.'

Basch nodded, 'Before, I heard the Esper speak, it addressed the presence of its 'master' and said it was now free.' He looked to Fran, 'I was under the impression that Balthier still held covenant with Mateus, and had done ever since our discovery of the Esper in the Stilshrine of Miriam.'

Fran nodded, 'Balthier has been unable to break covenant with the Esper. Twice we attempted the exorcism and twice the Esper did resist most painfully for the host. Balthier chose to ignore the presence of the Corrupt within him instead of inflicting further pain.'

'Wait,' Vaan stepped forward, 'You're saying that not only did Balthier have Venat poking about in his brain uninvited but that he had Mateus the Corrupt in there as well?'

All eyes turned to Fran, who could only shrug, 'In manner of speaking; yes.'

'Huh,' Vaan grunted as Penelo, Larsa and Basch exchanged uneasy looks. In retrospect, the notion that Balthier had not one but two inhume entities playing in the depths of his sub-conscious made quite a bit of sense; no wonder the man had been flirting with insanity for the last ten years.

Without further word, and under the disinterested regard of the traders and patrons of the infamous midnight market, the five unlikely visitors to the city turned and began to trek towards the imposing tower of the Keep, where despite the late hour, one lamp was burning from the highest window under the conical roof.

* * *

Balthier's first purely lucid and ephemeral thought went as follows: 'Hmm, still not dead yet.'

His second thought, which chased fast on the heels of the first was something along the lines of: 'Sweet gods I hurt.'

Which in turn, as his thoughts ran together in relatively coherent linear fashion for the first time in a very long time, was followed up by the general summation of his situation as follows: 'Hmmm, things could be worse.'

Opening his eyes on reality once more Balthier found himself staring up at the familiar white-washed ceiling of his tower room in the Keep of Nalbina. He was aware, more acutely for having spent the last however many months (or life-times) as a disembodied stray current of existence in the general milieu of creation, of lying on his back on his big, warm bed, wrapped in warm blankets and head pillowed in well-fluffed pillows.

He would have purred with the sheer, exquisite pleasure of being able to feel anything once more, except for the crushing, burning pressure on his chest that made it immensely painful to breathe in and out; having drowned once already Balthier felt that the feeling now scorching his throat and deflating his lungs was akin to drowning out of water. He did not appreciate the irony of this in the slightest.

Still, having the vague and dreamlike memory of what it felt like to be without a body and nothing more than a beam of intention, a breeze of consciousness in the gale of Mist that roared through the very fabric of reality, being able to experience pain was something to be celebrated.

Balthier did wonder how it was that he came to be alive and with a physical form once more (he assumed it was his own body he had landed in, and sincerely hoped this was the case, but without a mirror, and with muscles too tired to move, he could not see to know) but for the most part his main pre-occupation was in breathing.

He was still trying to draw enough oxygen into his failing lungs when the door to his chamber opened and a small horde of excitable Moogles piled in dragging in their wake a hume carrying a physicians valise bag.

Balthier, as he grew more accustomed to being alive again, found his philosophical appreciation for pain fading exponentially with each moment he gasped for breath like a landed fish. Therefore the ministrations of the physician and the concerned chattering of the Moogles passed him by.

'Master Balthier?'

Nono's white furred, whiskered face and opaque black eyes filled his vision as his faithful third crewman stood on his pillow and peered down at him with concern. Balthier was not sure what the physician injected into the vein of his arm but whatever it was he would have appreciated a fair bit more of the same as instantly the pain diminished and he ended up feeling quite well; so abruptly in fact, that it came as something of a jolt.

He drew in a tremendous gulp of air and met the eyes of the physician, a man in handsome late middle age, with a pencil straight silver beard and moustache and a svelte figure.

'Mr Bunansa could you tell me what year it is?' the man asked solicitously.

Balthier found himself considering this question. He knew what year it had been the last time he'd been aware of such ephemeral constraints as time, but had no idea how long he had been, for all intents and purposes, dead.

'Not readily.' He replied honestly, voice barely more than a croak. 'It was early 715 o.v. when last I was in position to know.'

'I see,' the doctor, whose name Balthier did not know, looked thoughtful.

'And can you tell me your name; your full name, and any aliases you commonly use.'

Balthier coughed a little as he drew in breath to speak, 'Balthier. Family name Bunansa, born Ffamran Mid Bunansa.'

The doctor smiled, 'Very good. Now please follow this pen-light with your eyes.'

The man preceeded to wave an uncomfortably bright miniature crystal light on the end of a wand no wider or longer than a pencil before his eyes; Balthier saw no reason not to indulge the doctor who had given him whatever it was that had taken his pain away, and following a light with his eyes was considerably less taxing than thinking or speaking at any rate.

'Well done. Now, you appear to have an old injury on your lower chest. If I'm not mistaken it is some form of sword wound?'

'Rapier,' he croaked, remembering quite vividly just how much it had hurt when the maniac Joaquin Ondore had run him through six years ago.

'I see. Well, your Moogle friend has informed me of the…….unusual….circumstances of your most recent brush with death, but I cannot find any new injuries upon you. However, you are suffering from the onset of starvation and corresponding muscle wastage. I believe that that weakness, coupled with the old rapier wound, has lead you to contract a rather virulent respiratory infection. I prescribe bed-rest and will instruct Mr Nono here, on what medicine and food to give you to speed your recovery.'

Balthier, at the present moment, could not see anything wrong with vast quantities of bed rest, but there was something bothering him. He looked from the nameless doctor to Nono.

'……Ashe?...children?' it hurt a disturbing amount to speak but he needed to know. The last he remembered had been that Ashe was the prisoner of Kry and Mayhew and, having no idea how much time he had spent being dead, he was exceedingly anxious for word on his wife and children.

'I have sent Minty to bring the Lady Ashe and the children here, Master Balthier.'

Nono stood up rigidly straight on the pillow near Balthier's head. His pom-pom plume all a-quiver with pride. 'Have no fear, Nono has been serving your interests well in your absence.' he announced proudly.

Balthier managed the faintest of smiles, 'I don't doubt it.' Two other thoughts occurred to him, 'And Fran, she is well?'

Nono cocked his head a little nervously, 'I believe so, Master Balthier, she was not in any danger when last I saw her.'

He did not mention that he had not seen her since Balthier's own disappearance, on account of the fact that he had immediately gone into hiding when the Occuria emerged. Balthier noticed this careful evasion but, contentedly drugged, did not pursue it, instead he made a tactical error in another way.

'Very well,' he made an attempt to sit up, almost growled in pain and promptly decided that lying down would suffice for the moment, 'You had best let me have it, Nono. How long have I been gone and what have I missed?'

Nono had managed no more than fifteen words of his tale before Balthier found himself vehemently wishing he was dead again.

* * *

'Master Squiggles I declare you outcast.'

Hallie all but shouted as she spun around in a half-pirouette with the sandbag octopus in her fist and then let go of the toy which sailed across the air of the palace playroom, arcing straight over Heios' head (her brother not bothering to look up from his book) to smack into the far wall and explode in a shower of sand.

Hallie assessed the corpse of Master Squiggles with a certain haughty satisfaction then turned to the windowsill where the surviving row of sandbag octopus sat, flanked on all sides by an assortment of other toys, both clockwork soldiers and soft, cotton-fluff packed dolls.

'Well,' Hallie said primly looking down her nose at the sandbag octopus', 'let that be a lesson to the rest of you. Princess Hallie sky pirate queen of Ivalice, is merciful to her enemies, but she is not to be crossed.'

Eyeing her toys on the large bay window seat with critical regard Hallie was eventually satisfied that the surviving Octopus' were sufficiently cowed into subservience that she could, after all, invite them to the royal tea-party being held by herself and Mr Bubbles, wherein she and her collection of royal rag-dolls would discuss their next grand adventure.

Heios, who for the most part ignored his sisters rambunctious games, lifted his gaze from his book and watched his sister array her toys about the small table used for tea-parties and drawing by the royal twins. After a moment Heios put down the book and went to take his place at the table, lifting Mr Bubbles into his lap as Hallie poured imaginary tea with great solemnity.

'I now call this session of parrlaament to session.' Hallie announced once the pouring was done.

'Parliament.'

Heios murmured softly and Hallie looked over at him with a glower, 'What?'

'Par-lia-ment, not Parrlaament. You said the word wrong.'

'Did not.'

'Did too.'

'Not.'

'Did.'

Hallie picked up the little tea pot (made of thin sheet metal and painted a lurid pink never to be found in nature) with the intention of throwing it at her brother in response to his audacity in embarrassing her in front of the sandbag octopus delegation. It was at that moment that a commotion outside the nursery distracted both children.

The door to the nursery crashed open and their mother, cheeks white and eyes impossibly bright, marched in with Sister Minty (who was supposed to be enjoying a month's leave from duty) trailing at her heels.

'Quick, quick, children, pack up your things.'

Their mother said already moving towards one of the travelling toy chests and beginning to scope up toys into it as Minty moved to the wardrobe and began to pull the children's clothes from the hangers in preparation for packing.

'Mother?'

Heios spoke for both children as he approached their mother who was behaving very strangely indeed. Ashe turned around to envelop her young son in a crushing hug as he approached.

'Mother?'

Hallie hurried forward (if there were hugs being offered she was not going without her share).

'What is wrong mother?' she asked, growing scared when she realised that there were tears on her mother's cheeks. In an instant Hallie was crushed against her mother and along with her brother in a fierce hug.

'Everything is fine, children.' Ashe said through a confusing mixture of tears and laughter, as behind her back Minty finished explaining things to the quiet presence of Nanny Sorbet and the two Moogles blurred about the room in a buzz of dumpy wings packing up the nursery.

'Now go and fetch Mr Bubbles' travelling cage, for we are all going to Nalbina.'

The two children glanced at one another and hope ignited in both their eyes simultaneously. They turned back to their mother with bated breath. Ashe, feeling much the same way as her babes, reached out a trembling hand to cup each of her children's cheek.

'We are going to see your father, and welcome him home.'

Heios, in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, grinned hugely and threw his arms about his mother's neck kissing her messily, but enthusiastically, on the cheek. Hallie, who had been most affected by her father's absence, found the sudden soaring of her hopes a little too much to cope with, promptly wetting herself, and then bursting into noisy tears.

* * *

Meanwhile, a sleek, unusually shaped craft, of pure obsidian black metal, began to drop out of high altitude above the Dalmascan city of Nalbina.

Al-Cid Margrace, inside the fairly cramped cabin of the Naldoa Dancer, looked over at his fellow passenger the Gran Kiltias Marana with a raised eyebrow.

'You are sure?' he asked her in Rozzarian, for Marana was fluent in all the major languages of Ivalice (as well as some tongues that were not spoken any longer and others that had yet to be invented).

Marana, before helping Al-Cid commandeer the prototype airship and a pilot to fly it from Draklor, had also raided the Imperial palaces pantry for more biscuits and was now in the process of devouring an entire roll of shortbread, looked up and grinned through a mouthful of crumbs.

'Yes.'

'And you are sure that Larsa, his lady, and the others will also be in Nalbina?' Al-Cid had reservations about putting his trust in Kiltia seers, but he could not deny that Marana had the habit of being worryingly accurate in her predictions.

'I dreamed it so therefore it shall be so.' Marana said somewhat imperiously spraying crumbs from her lips.

Al-Cid turned back to look out of the black tinted windows of the craft as they dropped through the rain tossed storm clouds and towards the high towers and bright lights of Nalbina. He began to drum his fingers on the armrests of his seat. What Marana had told him was scarcely believable, even to a man such as he, who had lived the life he had.

'I wonder,' Al-Cid said more to himself than to his near omniscient fellow passenger, 'who will be greeting us upon arrival, the pirate, or the Occurian heretic?'

Having been told by Marana, in round about manner, that she had been well aware all along of the Moogle plot to free Balthier (and had in fact had known precisely what had happened to the pirate since the Pharos – but kept that information hidden for reasons she did not see fit to divulge) Al-Cid was now left to ponder the imponderables of Balthier's return and the consequences of such.

Al-Cid was something of a philosophical pragmatist; he looked always towards the betterment of humekind, but accepted the reality that one needed to work with the raw materials one had, which meant on occasion making deals with metaphorical devils to achieve noble ends.

Alas, Al-Cid was not sure who was the greater evil in this occasion, the Occuria of Giruvegan, Venat, or Balthier himself.

As the Naldoa Dancer requested permission to land in Nalbina Aerodrome and was granted that permission Al-Cid consoled himself with the less than cheering thought that at least he would not have long to wait to find out.

* * *

In the quiet still heart of Giruvegan, deep within the circuitous heart of the Great Crystal, Professor Kry paced between the fossilised physical forms of the Occuria high council.

His feet hurt and his knees were stiff with joint pain. His chest was still sore from the magicite arrow and his throat raw from the Lady Ashe's knife, but despite all this Kry was still very much alive and in foul mood.

He had been opposed to attacking Golmore, a man still haunted by the destruction of Nabudis he had not wanted yet more needless deaths on his conscience, but the Occuria council would not listen.

Sometimes Kry simply wished he knew what the Occuria's true objective was.

A shimmer within the cold Mist shrouding the chamber heralded the arrival of the Occuria back into their petrified physical forms, frozen forever in poses of deep thought and pensive concentration.

A moment later Kry felt the odd shiver that was neither cold nor warm, of Gerun seeping back into his mind and body.

'It is done,' Kry could feel his throat pulse and his own lips form words that he was not meaning to say, 'Venat and the vessel are freed. We must now wait.'

Although the other Occuria could not move or make a sound in the purely physical realm, their bodies no more than calcified anchors to hold their spirits in rest, Kry was aware of their apprehension like the buzz of insects in his ears.

_Can we trust Venat?_

_What of the vessel; is the hume malleable to our needs?_

Once more Gerun spoke through Kry's lips, 'The hume vessel, while cut from the same cloth as the father, is not as the hume Cidolfus. He may yet prove to be a better instrument of our ultimate victory than the first Bunansa ever was.'

Once more Kry almost winced against the current of apprehension, anxiety, and desperate anticipation that filled the silent, Mist shrouded chamber. He felt his own lips curl as Gerun smiled.

'Soon,' Kry's lips crooned, 'Soon we shall be free. Soon the Occuria shall follow our gods of clay and know what it is to be as they are. Soon we shall ascend.'

* * *

_A/N: thanks to the kindness, interest, and support of everyone who has reviewed this story we have reached a new record for reviews of any one story I have written. In essence numbers do not matter as much as the content of reviews, but as I have been phenomenally lucky to receive such a quantity of good, kind, flattering, interesting and helpful reviews I wanted to take the time to once again collectively thank everyone who has reviewed, be it once, or in some cased too many times to count. ;)_


	35. Chapter 35

**Chapter Thirty-Five: Reunion, Gatherings, and a Positive Outlook on Resurrection**

After Nono had gone over his story of the last six months for a second time and Balthier felt that (unfortunately) he had grasped all the key dynamics of this Turning and so on, he took the time to shake hands (or index finger as the case proved to be) with each of the forty odd Moogles who had assisted in his rescue and resurrection and passed a few moments in pleasantries with each.

Growing fatigued rather quickly the doctor (whose name was B'Nellin) had given him another dose of the mysterious (miraculous) pain killer prompting an oddly ebullient Balthier to offer the man a staggering sum of Gil if he would only leave a case of his medicine behind him for Balthier's further (recreational) use.

Realising that he had not eaten in six months Balthier would cheerfully have devoured an entire Chocobo (feathers and all) if one had been presented to him at the time; instead he was given a small bowl of broth and soft bread (apparently his stomach had grown so shrunken that anything more than a child's portion would have killed him - again).

Never having been much of one for culinary delights, believing as he did that food was no more than fuel, Balthier nevertheless declared that this broth was the best he had ever tasted and the chef should be immediately knighted for their contributions to the betterment of humekind.

All in all, and considering he'd spent the last six months as nothing more than the memory of flesh and blood, his physical form dissolved into its constituent atoms and distilled inside half a dozen Crystals, Balthier could not remember when he had felt more chipper.

As he drifted into sleep (the exercise of filling his stomach having exhausted him) Balthier made a mental note to bribe Doctor B'Nellin into service as he was clearly a gift from some manner of benign god; how much better things would be if he had access to the man's medication all the time.

* * *

Ashe had never pushed a Chocobo drawn cart faster than she did that night as she, Minty, and Nanny Sorbet, smuggled the children and their accoutrements out of the palace and made their way through the sandstorm to the entrance of the Barheim passage.

Ashe was not opposed to letting her court know that she was relocating to Nalbina but it would take too long to relocate her privy council and her innumerate servants, and after six months, Ashe was impatient to see for herself that Balthier was once more alive, well, and not insane.

The children and the two Moogles huddled under the canvas flap of the cart as Ashe sat at the head of the cart with the Chocobo reins in her hands and a thick, hooded cloak pulled about her, she had the time to consider all the things she had not dared think on before.

The same concerns that afflicted the mind of Larsa and Al-Cid had never been far from her own thoughts; she worried, had Venat truly been whispering poison in Balthier's ear for the last nine years, then did that mean that their marriage, their love, was no more than a convenient fabrication of the Occuria?

With hindsight Ashe could ascribe some of Balthier's more extreme eccentricities to the renegade Occuria (and would be glad to do so – as therefore a cure for his less endearing character traits was possible) but she could not bring herself to believe that every facet of their lives together, both before their marriage and after, was on his part because Venat was manipulating him.

After all, she and Balthier had consummated their mutual attraction before the fall of Bahamut, and if he hadn't been moved to rescue her city from annihilation _for _her, Balthier would never have re-boarded the falling Bahamut in the first place and thus would not have been in position to be possessed by Venat.

That Balthier could be manipulated by Venat was not inconceivable. He was a decisive and headstrong man, but if she knew where to find the cracks in his armour and how to sniff out his insecurities then Venat (who embodied quite a few of them) would most certainly be able to work patiently on his mind as they years flew by.

Nabudis had been the trap and Dr Cid the lure; Ashe had thought over this many times in the last six months and was convinced, from all she had been told by Fran and Marana, that Balthier had only started to be swayed by Venat in the last two years or so, and even then, he had fought against that manipulation sub-consciously all the way.

Thus, as Ashe paid the toll for the Barheim passage (which had been cleared, and kept clear, of fiends and opened for public transportation for the last five years) while keeping her hood up to obscure her identity, she reassured herself in her conviction that Balthier was no more tool of the Occuria than she was. Even if she found him a rambling fool talking to thin air when she reached Nalbina, Ashe would simply take it as her wifely duty to slap the sense back into him.

She had missed him terribly and no one and no thing was going to deny her the pleasure of a reunion with her second husband who had died, to her reckoning alone, at least half a dozen times already, but most importantly to her, considering the memory of Rasler's demise, Balthier never seemed to stay dead.

* * *

Moogles were not traditionally the most ferocious or awe-inspiring of fighters, but regardless of their reputation to be rather endearing industrious and peace-living creatures on the whole, forty miniature bow and arrow wielding Moogles were not a force to be sniffed at.

Fran looked from the ranks of Moogles (many of whom she recognised as Nono's adherents) and then to her compatriots as they stood before the tower Keep that formed the private residence of the Queen's husband, and the royal residence when the court was in session in the city.

Had she not been Fran there would have been a smile playing upon her lips as she considered the reason why forty Moogles would draw weapons on she and the four humes with her.

'He is back.'

She murmured and all eyes, including eighty jet black orbs of the forty Moogles, turned to her. At that moment Nono, proud in his green tunic with his badge of Kupo emblazoned upon his chest, pushed through the ranks and looked all the way up at Fran.

'Mistress Fran.' He said gravely.

Fran did not so much as flick her ears in surprise to find Nono here in Nalbina after sixth months in hiding. Instead she merely nodded in greeting, 'He is well?'

'The hume doctor spoke of sickness of the breathing,' Nono said with a certain trepidation, shaking his head and holding his favourite spanner between his small white paws anxiously, 'Kupo, kupo. I don't understand it, the calibrations were correct. He should not have been sickened by the re-constitution.'

'Re-constitution?' Larsa stepped forward dark eyes keen, 'Do you refer to Balthier? He is back, you say?'

A ripple of surprise went through Vaan, Penelo, and Basch at the news as Nono nodded firmly and waved his spanner to include himself and all the gathered Moogles in a loose circular movement.

'We brought Master Balthier back, kupo. Nono knows his duty to his captain, kupo.' Then the Moogle looked keenly to Fran, 'Was it you who used the travelling stone?'

Fran studied the Moogle thoughtful, 'That is the name for the Waystone within Balthier's cache?'

'Kupo; yes, kupo.' Nono's sharp black eyes regarded each of the humes behind Fran in turn.

'The travelling stone creates a reference point and nexus for energy transfer throughout Ivalice, Kupo. It works by tapping into Mist faults and stationary crystal access points, kupo.'

'Huh?' Vaan shook his head as he stepped forward and swooped Nono into his arms, without a thought to the forty Moogles who cocked their bow strings back in quiet outrage at the humes lack of propriety.

'Nono what are you talking about; are you saying you managed to rescue Balthier?'

The only thing that saved Vaan from death by forty arrows was Nono's quick shake of the head as he settled himself in the cradle of Vaan's arms.

'Yes, Kupo,' Nono sounded just a little put out that the humes were so slow to grasp what he was telling them. Master Balthier would understand as he thought Fran was beginning to.

'I would see him.' Fran said simply, but with a certain firmness that did not brook any objection.

Nono wrinkled his nose thinking. 'We are holding the way closed until Lady Ashe arrives, Kupo.'

He met Fran's ruby eyes and swallowed nervously at the look he saw reflected in those red orbs, 'Kupo, kupo. I suppose you may see him, Mistress Fran, but _only_ you.'

'Fran?'

Basch's voice floated to her as the Moogle guardians made a path for her to walk through and enter the Keep. Fran heard the worry and misgivings in his tone and turned back to him coolly.

'Failed him once, did I. I will not fail again. If it is Occuria that look through his eyes I will know.'

She turned and walked up the outer stairs and through the wood door into the Keep. The door slammed closed behind her, and Basch, Larsa, Penelo and Vaan looked to the Moogle comfortably situated in Vaan's arms.

'You may come in and wait in the audience chamber Kupo, as long as you do not try and see Master Balthier. It is not right that any should see him before the Lady Ashe arrives, Kupo.'

The four humes exchanged looks. Larsa and Basch's expression suggested that they want to argue the point, while Penelo just looked overwhelmed by everything that had occurred. Vaan shrugged easily.

'Sure; I mean we've waited six months so what's a few more hours, right?'

It was at that moment, as they were being escorted into the Keep by forty slightly hostile Moogles that a Chocobo drawn carriage roared into the courtyard of the keep and a rain soaked, bedraggled but animated Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca leapt off the cart and dashed across the courtyard.

'Lady Ashe!' Nono wriggled free of Vaan's arms and fluttered over to her on stubby wings.

Ashe was momentarily diverted by the sight of Larsa and Penelo in Nalbina, not to mention Basch and Vaan, but refused to allow this to distract her. Behind her back Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty popped out from under the canvas cover on the cart and the two royal children poked their heads out looking dazed and a little discombobulated from their bumpy, break-neck journey.

'Where is he?' Ashe demanded breathlessly, and then, taking matters into her own hands, barged through the rows of Moogles and into the Keep without further ado.

Penelo turned back from watching her go as the two Moogle nursemaids toddled over in escort to the royal twins. 'Um, well I guess we're all here now, more or less.'

She murmured somewhat dazedly as Hallie and Heios, recognising their Aunty Empress, ran over for obligatory hugs and kisses. Vaan, having espied two more late night visitors to Nalbina town, rubbed the back of his neck and shuffled his feet in bemusement.

'Uh-huh,' he drawled slowly, 'but what is Al-Cid doing here?'

As they all turned to look at the two new arrivals, Al-Cid and her Grace Marana (who was skipping while eating biscuits) Larsa exchanged a look with Basch.

'Well, this cannot be a coincidence,' the Archadian Emperor demurred dryly, 'Perhaps we shall finally receive some definitive answers?'

Basch, looking somewhat sour, shook his head as he turned to regard the golden light shining from the highest window of the Keep, 'Not when the pirate's involved we won't.'

* * *

Ashe crashed up the stairs and through the door that lead into Balthier's apartments without bothering to take a breath.

Lactic acid burned through her knee joints and scolded her lungs after running headlong up five flights of turnpike stairs but she did not let that stop her as she dashed through the cluttered parlour and into the bedroom; the sound of a man coughing calling to her.

Stumbling through the threshold she came to an abrupt stop to see Fran quietly sitting on the side of the bed with one hand to the bare chest of the man who lay sprawled across the mattress wheezing uncomfortably and rasping for breath. Ashe bit her bottom lip savagely and held her peace; she would not intrude on Fran's moment of reunion.

The Viera did not acknowledge her presence as her ears twitched listening to Balthier's uneven breathing her palm pressed against his breastbone. Fran's eyes were closed and Ashe had the feeling that she was divining more through that one touch than any hume could.

Balthier coughed, and Ashe saw his knees curl up under the thick red brocade coverlet as his body reacted to the violence of his coughing fit. He did not wake however. Ashe's eyes ticked over the body in the bed, analysing the signs of abuse and ill-health, and also every familiar much loved facet of his being.

He was in need of a shave and his hair, usually an odd indeterminate colour between a golden brown and a muddy blonde, was darkened and knotted by dirt and in need of a trim. Nevertheless the long, proud blade of his nose was the same, as was the wide expressive mouth. She moved over to the bed on the other side from Fran and clambered up to sit against the pillows beside him.

'A chest infection; the mark of Joaquin come back to haunt him,' Fran murmured addressing Ashe easily even with her eyes closed. 'His most recent misfortunes will take toll on him; years of life, perhaps, are lost to him.'

Ashe chewed on her bottom lip, looking down on the gaunt face, cheekbones too prominent, cheeks hollow and scolded with fever flush, and the dark sunken bruised flesh about his closed eyes.

'He is here now and he breathes; that is enough.'

She murmured running her fingers through his hair and coming away with granules of sea salt and sand in her palms as she brushed through tangles.

'Yes,' Fran conceded and opened her eyes withdrawing her hand from his chest, 'Leave you now I will. He will waken soon and it is you he will wish to see.'

Before Fran left the room Ashe called her back, 'Do you not want to see him as well? He will have just as much desire to see you as me.'

Fran shook her head, the faintest of smiles playing about her lips, 'My time can wait; six months lost time he has to make up to you and his children first.'

As the door closed quietly behind Fran Balthier rolled over in his sleep and threw one arm across the bed (or as it happened across her lap) and Ashe ended up with Balthier's face pressed against her hip as she sat against the headboard running fingers through his seawater stiffened hair.

She was not sure how long she spent sitting there listening to him breathe and absorbing the sensation of being near him again. After a while she looked critically over the raised bumps of visible vertebrae along his spine, the ridges and hollows of ribs rubbing against his too thin, too fine, skin.

Balthier had always tended towards scrawniness and she had often thought that it was only his dedication to a frankly gruelling regimen of physical exercise (running, boxing, swimming – crashing sky fortresses) that kept any muscle on his bones at all, now that muscle had wasted visibly and he seemed to be almost smaller than he had before.

'What have you done to yourself, you stupid pirate?' she murmured, stroking one hand along his bony flank as she continued to scratch her fingers through his hair with the other, his head more or less pillowed in her lap.

Minty had tried to explain to her the long and short of how Nono and the Moogles had managed to locate and rescue Balthier but, having caught only the operative words of 'Balthier', 'alive' and 'in Nalbina' the rest of the details had sailed cleanly over her head. Ashe had, in a moment of divine relief, prudently decided that consequences and explanations could wait until she had ascertained for herself that he was home again.

Balthier reacted unconsciously to Ashe's ministrations, stretching out his arm across her body a little more and sighing contentedly, which swiftly turned into a cough that in turn caused him to wake up.

It was a moment of almost excruciating anticipation for Ashe as she watched him blink his eyes dazedly. She held her own breath as he coughed again and shifted to roll his eyes up to meet her gaze; it was the moment of truth. Who would be looking out of those warm brown eyes, her husband, or Venat?

He smiled; gaunt, pale face lighting up with a radiance that made him appear more handsome than he ever had before. Ashe realised that the last time she had seen him smile like that was the day Heios successfully named all the parts within a basic airship engine.

'…….Ashe…..'

The hand flung across her shifted to squeeze her knee and Ashe could not move a muscle when, with more effort than seemed comfortable, Balthier eased himself up so his head was on the pillows, 'Highness, I have _missed_ you.'

Her hand, which had been stroking his hair, was now limp across the counterpane beside them. Balthier clasped that hand in his and drew it towards his lips, 'Are you well? The last I knew you were an unwilling guest of Mayhew and the Baknamy.'

Ashe had prepared herself for Balthier to be raving mad, corrupted by Venat, driven out of his wits by all he had suffered, or otherwise in a foul mood. She was not ready for the soft affection, relief, and love that backlit his eyes. She swallowed around the tremendous lump in her throat and nodded her head mutely.

'And the children? How is my little Hallie; has Heios gained in social skills?'

As he plied her with questions Balthier began to struggle up into a sitting position, face contorting with pain as his lungs complained.

'Are they with you, Highness? I want to see how they've grown while I've been essentially extinct.'

She watched realisation cross his features as he managed to drag himself upright and, dazedly, mechanically, she helped to prop the pillows up at his back. 'Gods be damned, I've missed their birthday haven't I?'

Ashe opened her mouth and then closed it before trying the process again. She stared at the man before her, who looked sick and weak and worn out, but whose harsh rasping voice nevertheless expressed a flavour of sheer geniality, of easy good humour, that belied all he had gone through and made it null and void. Tears pricked her eyes and, choking back a half laugh, half sob, she clasped his face in her hands and kissed him full on the lips.

She drew back, no more than half an inch, so that she could speak, 'Possession by Occuria, pirate?' she demanded even as she brushed her lips to his again, 'Could you not come up with anything more original?'

He beamed at her, and truly she could not remember a time he had been more carefree and jovial. His warm chuckle fell into a gasping cough however and Ashe hastily stretched across him to hand him a glass of water from the bedside table.

'Ugn, do not make me laugh, Highness, it will be the death of me,' he winced, '_again_.'

Ashe nipped her bottom lip and clasped both his hands in hers once he had taken all he could swallow of the water and she had returned the glass to the table.

'Balthier?' she did not know how to finish the question, or even how to start it. He nodded his head slowly, brown eyes steady and filled only with his own feelings and his own thoughts.

'I am not at my best, Highness,' he told her seriously, understanding the question that she could not voice, 'in fact if not for Dr B'Nellin's exemplary care, I should think I would be in far too much pain to be purely sensible right now, but….'

'But?' she gripped his hands tighter. She almost didn't want to hear his next words, as much as she needed to do so.

Balthier shook his head bemused, 'Dying in actuality is quite profoundly different from _nearly_ dying,' he continued musingly, 'I have nearly died so many times I think the immediacy and poignancy of the act has somewhat faded. Dying in truth, experiencing what I barely remember experiencing, makes a lot of difference to a man's sense of perspective.'

'What?' Ashe croaked letting go of his hands in shock, 'Balthier you did not die. You could not have truly died….' Her voice trailed away at the calm, steady, quiet, certainty in his eyes.

'Yes, Ashe, I did. I drowned and was crushed at the very bottom of the Pharos. My body, bloody hell, my _soul_, was twisted, melted down, and dissipated to the four winds by the Occuria, and the only thing that kept any part of _me _together at all was my father's Occuria: Venat.'

'Venat?' her throat closed and she almost expected the ghostly inhume visage, glowing with Mist, to appear from the very air.

Balthier reached out a hand to stroke her cheek, 'Yes. She's gone now, Venat, the Undying has achieved her goal and finally found peace in death.'

Something like grief forced his gaze from hers and Ashe could only stare at him, heart pounding and skin tingling with shock, fear, apprehension. What was he telling her, why did she see sorrow in his eyes at the mention of Venat…..and since when was Venat a '_she'_?

Balthier turned sad brown eyes to hers, serious eyes, filled with an odd, quiet conviction she had never seen before. He reached out and clasped her hands raising them to his lips and pressing a kiss to each of her palms.

'History in the hands of man; what my father did not understand, what Venat could not teach him, she taught me.'

Those brown eyes held her captive, filled with far too much knowledge all of a sudden. Balthier had always been clever, but Ashe realised, until now she had never seen _wisdom_ in those sorrel depths.

'I know where they come from Ashe. The Occuria, I know their secret. I know who the gods with feet of clay are, and that is why, Highness, we have to help the Occuria. It is the only way any of us will see tomorrow.'

* * *

_A/N: Next up: Bibble-bobble, babble-splat...the Princess of the Octopi comes a-calling ;)_


	36. Chapter 36

**Chapter Thirty-Six: Anthropomorphic Stress Relief and Gods with Feet of Clay**

'I do not think it wise that Ashe should be alone with him. At least not until it has been proven that the man is in his right mind,' Basch repeated and then under his breath added, 'Or at least as much as he is ever in right mind.'

Fran shifted in her recline against the wall of the circular room that served as the audience chamber when Ashe was in residence and Balthier's lounge and 'casual' library at times when the Queen was not in situ.

'There was no sense of benighted Mist or Occuria in him as he slept; I believe it safe.' Fran stated firmly, and despite the fact that she had failed to detect anything of Venat in the nine years prior no one dared contradict her.

'Well,' Vaan broke into the uncomfortable silence that permeated the room, 'that doctor said Balthier was kind of ill anyway, so even if he is temporarily evil or insane I think Ashe could probably take him.'

More than one person looked over to give him a less than enamoured look at that statement.

The 'casual' library, which was arranged much in the style of a comfortably sitting room, walls lined with draught extracting tapestries and bookcases groaning with tomes, a writing desk covered in small cogs from half repaired clocks and half-finished notes and semi-official declarations that Ashe had started but not finished, was decidedly cramped.

Larsa and Penelo perched on the three seater sofa beside the Gran Kiltias (who said not a word as she continued to single-minded devour roll after a roll of shortbread) while Fran opted to stand as did Basch and Al-Cid too pride of place in the leather wingchair and Vaan comfortably sprawled on the bear skin rug by the fireplace (Nalbina was sufficiently colder in climate than Rabanastre to warrant such a fixture).

Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty, huddled with Nono and the Baknamy Bells and Whistles (who was an enterprising sort and thought he might do well to stick with these Moogles and the humes they served) involved in a whispered exchange that none of the other occupants of the room (except Fran) could hear.

Hallie and Heios, unnaturally quiet, were also settled on the floor near the door to the stairs. With her collection of sandbag octopus arrayed around her Hallie appeared, to the distracted adults in the room, to be contented enough, as did Heios, who was sitting quietly with a book open across his lap. However the children were anything but content.

Hallie, fingers in her mouth, watched the incomprehensible adult conversation with growing anxiety. At five years old neither she nor Heios understood the nuances and sharp pall of tension that rang heavy throughout the room, but both children were certainly acutely aware of it.

Hallie did not understand why she had not been taken to see Father, or where her mother had gone. She did not understand why the adults in the room weren't making a fuss of her (or even Heios – though he was rather boring). She had asked Al-Cid Margrace if he had any sweets and was quite shocked when he said he didn't (though he promised to bring a double lot next time he came to Dalmasca) even Aunty Empress did not seem as affectionate as usual.

Hallie did not know what was happening and the adults conversation, which she did not understand but somehow intuited was about her Father, made her nervous and unhappy. Where were her father and mother? Why was no one paying her any attention?

Sucking so hard on her fingers that she nearly choked on accumulated saliva, Hallie could feel her eyes pricking with tears and looked about her for Mr Bubbles so she could cuddle him. She was annoyed to find that Heios had already beaten her to it, and had his nose buried in the unfortunate (but long suffering) Dreamhare's fur.

Hallie needed to relieve herself but the bathroom was upstairs and she wasn't allowed to go up the twisty stone stairs of the Keep without supervision. Looking over to Nanny Sorbet and Sister Minty (who were also not paying her or Heios proper attention) Hallie was too self-conscious, too affected by the strange, heavy, scary atmosphere of the room, to dare call attention to herself.

She really needed to go to the toile; Mother would be angry if she had another accident, and she did not want to tell Father when she saw him that she was still wetting herself (she wanted to be a big girl for her Father).

The first, silent tear rolled down her cheek and her wet eyes looked over at the sandbag octopuses (including Master Squiggles, who had been picked up by Mother and was now a bit deflated but otherwise well).

Usually when Hallie was either sad, scared, or bored, she turned herself into some form of animal. A Chocobo would be able to run away really fast, but Hallie did not want to run away before she saw Father. A sheep would be no good at all and a Moogle (which she sometimes turned into as well) was clearly no good as all the Moogles she knew were in this room as well.

Hallie picked up one of her sandbag octopus thoughtfully in the palm of her hand and held it up level with her face; maybe…….maybe she could be an octopus? Octopus scared her, therefore they were automatically (to Hallie's way of thinking) big, strong, brave and never, ever, wet themselves.

Yes, Hallie thought triumphantly as she pulled her slobber covered fingers from her mouth, she would be an Octopus and climb the twisty stairs herself, and go to the toilet on her own like a big girl, and then she would find mother and father and tell them and they would very proud of her.

She would start right now; puffing out her cheeks, Hallie lifted her arms out from her body and began to waggle them up and down and side to side, rolling her wrists in what she thought was a good approximation of what an octopus did.

Heios, who was as scared, confused, and nervous as his sister looked up from cuddling (asphyxiating) Mr Bubbles to see his sister (going red in the face with puffed up cheeks) flapping her arms about and swaying like someone in the midst of a very odd form of fit. Curious he released Mr Bubbles and crawled over to her.

'What are you doing?' he whispered as he came up beside her and was promptly smacked in the head by one of her arms (tentacles).

'Shhh!' Hallie released the air from her cheeks in a rather loud unfortunate burble of sound, especially as she was the one demanding silence. Still, engrossed in an increasingly acrimonious conversation, none of the adults noticed.

'I am an octopus and I am going up the twisty stairs to the toilet like a big girl octopus,' Hallie told him narrowing her eyes fiercely, 'And you are not going to stop me!'

Heios would sooner be anywhere but here at this moment in time and so, after casting a forlorn look to the adults too busy with their own concerns to pay attention to him and his sister, Heios said simply: 'I want to be an octopus too.'

Hallie was a little surprised by this, but magnanimously, and also because she was a little afraid of ascending the stairs alone, she allowed that he could be an octopus as well, however:

'You have to move your arms like this, and Octopuses don't talk so you must only say….' She thought for a moment, 'Bibble.'

'Bibble?' Heios asked, already waggling his arms about as Hallie was.

Hallie inflated her cheeks once more and nodded firmly, 'Bibble-bobble, babble-splat.'

She advanced the vocabulary of the Octopus a little further as she surged to her feet and waggled her way to the open doorway leading up the stairs. Heios followed, arms waggling and uttering the occasion soft voiced 'Bibble' for authenticity's sake.

Mr Bubbles the Dreamhare watched the two hume children go for a moment and then hopped after them. None of the adults in the room (except Marana who saw everything but said little) noticed the children's departure.

Halfway up the first turnpike (or twisty) staircase Hallie and Heios came to realise that there were definite disadvantages to climbing stairs as wiggly-waggling Octopuses. They were both exhausted, oxygen deprived, and dizzy before they reached the first floor.

'Can we stop now, Bibble-bobble?' Heios asked.

'No,' Hallie snapped as she now really needed the toilet. She continued to gyrate her way up the stairs with increasingly irritable exclamations of 'bibble-bobble, babble-splat' and Heios and Mr Bubbles dutifully following.

Reaching the second floor and the toilet was quite an achievement but Hallie had no time to savour her success as she dashed into the toilet as fast as an Octopus could run.

Once she had finished to the best of her abilities, she returned to the landing where Heios had grown bored of waggling his arms about. She narrowed her eyes at him and he hastily returned to his guise as an octopus at rest.

'Now we must find Father; Bibble-bobble, babble-splat.' she told him commandingly and Heios nodded.

The next three flights to the top were no easier than the first two but Hallie never once let her octopus dignity down by failing in the performance. Mr Bubbles, bouncing dutifully after the two hume infants, cast one or two cure spells as it seemed that the children's lips were going purple and their faces puce from holding their breath and puffing out their cheeks so long.

Even Hallie came to a stop however when they heard the sound of voices (and coughing) coming from the big, closed wooden door at the end of the last flight of stairs.

'I can barely countenance it; Balthier are you _sure_?'

'Yes, Highness, whether or not Venat's ultimate intentions were good or ill, she had no reason to make up such a fabrication; in fact it would serve her purposes more to make up something else entirely.'

'Yes…..it is incredible, and yet strangely it makes sense. All this time we thought the Occuria were would-be gods and that, by default, they must pre-date the emergence of Humes on Ivalice. But this……?'

'Hmm, that was mostly my father's fault. His misconception has caused more trouble than he could know.'

'Still, regardless of the source, and I will admit that I am not happy to take _Venat's_ word on anything, it makes a chilling amount of sense. All beings wish to tear down their gods, I suppose.'

'Still it is a bind. We humes are not so much negligent gods' as ignorant; the gods with feet of clay indeed.'

Hallie and Heios, standing before the closed door, stared at each other with bright eyes and baited breath. Father; that was their father's voice!

'The Mist and the Occuria; we knew there was a profound connection, but never imagined that the Occuria came from the Mist left over from Humes casting magick. It is extraordinary to think that the Occuria, who would control us, in fact derive, in part, _from_ Humes.'

Hallie and Heios heard their mother's voice. She sounded thoughtful and not a little shocked.

'Not really; slaves revolt all the time. Of course, usually the slave master is aware of their status in the equation.'

What sounded like their father's voice broke into coughs, and there was a pause before he resumed.

'Part of the Occuria's power has always been that they know where they come from, and we, their accidental creators, do not. That is the true meaning of the phrase 'history in the hands of man'. My father never saw it, despite Venat's best efforts. Bah, I suppose that's what obsession does to a man.'

For Hallie and Heios, listening uncomprehending outside the door, there was a dilemma: how did an octopus open a closed door?

In the end Hallie solved the problem by slapping the palms of her hands across the wood surface of the door and loudly proclaiming, 'Bibble-Bobble, Babble-splat.' After a moment Heios crowded close and helped beat down the door in the manner of the octopus.

'What in the name of the gods……'

The door was pulled open and the two marauding octopuses slipped around their mother's legs and into the room.

'Father?'

The two children rocked to a halt at their first view of the man sitting on their father's bed; neither child knew what to make of the man, who was all furry on his face and his hair was all spiky and crunchy looking. Hallie stared at the man with his face thin and sharp, his skin very pale, and the white shirt partially buttoned, hanging shapelessly off shoulders that were narrower than they had been.

'Children what are you doing coming up these stairs on your own; you know that is not allowed.' Ashe admonished recovering from the surprise of their impromptu arrival.

Hallie and Heios, staring at the man they did not recognise as their father, both immediately returned to the safety of being an octopus.

'Bibble, bibble, bibble.'

Heios said nervously while Hallie decided to let her actions speak for her and turned in a tight circle arms flailing. She had heard her father but she could not see him; where was her father?

'Hmm, Highness is this normal?'

The man who almost sounded like Hallie's and Heios' beloved father, except for the strange purring burr in his throat as he spoke, looked at their mother with one raised eyebrow. Ashe, wrong footed by this bizarre display of waggling limbs and verbal gibberish from both her children, shook her head.

'I see.'

Slowly, and with obvious effort, the man on the bed stood up, using the bedpost for support, and moved towards them. Heios went still and watched him with large, wary eyes, but Hallie spun away to the far corner of the room.

'Where's my Father?' she demanded. Beginning to cry, and flailing her arms and kicking her legs for all her worth, Hallie pointed savagely at the man in the centre of the room, 'Why is this funny man here? I don't like him!'

'Hallie!'

Her mother snapped at her as Heios ran over to join her and Mr Bubbles hopped over to stand at her feet. Hallie, tears streaming down her face, stared up at the funny, strange man who talked with her Father's voice but didn't look or move like her tall, strong, proud father at all.

The man lowered himself, painfully, down onto the floor of the bedroom and shook his head at their mother, 'Ashe, it is fine. I am in an appalling state; I do not blame our little princess in the least.'

The man looked at her keenly, 'And who might you two be, with your arms waving all over, hmm?' his eyes were warm and brown and looked like her Father's, but Hallie was not moved, she turned her nose up and looked away.

'Bibble-bobble, babble-splat; I am princess of the Octopus and I don't like you. I want my father.'

Something like a smile twitched the man's lips but it was hard to see through all the muddy brown stubbly hairs that sprouted all over his face (her father didn't have a furry face). 'Ah, I see, and I suppose the fine young Octopus beside you would be the Prince of the Octopi, yes?'

Hallie and Heios exchanged a look. They had not really discussed the internal hierarchy but decided it was close enough. Heios nodded, watching the man speculatively and with less hostility than Hallie.

The man nodded thoughtfully, as their mother, shaking her head in despair of her children, picked up Mr Bubbles and sat down on the end of the bed, frowning but keeping her peace for the moment.

'Well, perhaps you can help me Princess of the Octopus? I am looking for my two very special children. One is a very pretty and brave Hume Princess and the other is a very clever, bright young Prince. Do you know where I might find them?'

The two children exchanged looks and it was Heios who spoke, 'Is the prince a tall boy? Because I am tall for my age…….and soon I will have a gentleman's vest.'

The smile flashed across the man's bony face and he looked almost like their father; almost. He nodded, 'Yes, but not so tall as you are, because you have grown very tall indeed. I would even go so far as to say you looked at least _six_ years old.'

The man addressed Heios who preened and rose up at least another half-inch on pride alone.

'Plus,' the man added slyly, 'I would hope my son, although a proper gentleman, would not have a vest just yet as he promised he would let me purchase one for him.'

It was all that needed to be said. Hallie was more than trifle put out when her brother abruptly transformed from octopus to hume and ran the few steps to where the man (not Father – she would not believe it) waited with open arms.

'It's me father; it's Heios. I would not have a vest made without you.'

Hallie, irritably muttered, 'Bibble-bobble, babble-splat!' and refused to be moved by her brother's betrayal or the sight of the big cuddle Heios received from the bony, furry man who was not, under any circumstances whatsoever, her father.

The man looked at Hallie who glared back at him bottom lip wobbling. 'You are all pointy and furry. My Father is not pointy and he does not have a furry face.'

'No,' the man murmured prosaically, 'an octopus would have no use for a furry face; he would fast become water-logged.'

Petting Mr Bubbles on her lap Ashe snorted back a laugh and Hallie, feeling like her back was against a metaphorical wall, glowered at everyone in the room. The man reached out one hand to her.

'Are you angry with me, my lady Octopus?' he asked quietly as Hallie began to cry even more and wiped fiercely at her cheeks; she nodded miserably before wailing at the top of her lungs, 'Why did you leave us?'

Before her furry faced, bony, pointy, father could answer she careened into his arms, giving up her disguise as an octopus and barging her way into the hug Heios had been previously enjoying exclusively.

'Ugn,' her father grunted as the force with which Hallie pushed into him and wrapped her small arms about him knocked him backward and his spine hit the wooden leg of the bed, 'there goes my _other_ lung.'

Nevertheless he hugged her back fiercely and Hallie felt almost better. Still, there were some matters that needed to be addressed. She poked her father in his knobbly ribs rather savagely.

'Why are you all skinny?' she demanded not noticing the brief flash of pain that crossed Balthier's face and caused Ashe to intervene before his children put him in his grave for good.

Once Ashe had tugged the twins into her arms, so that they were not crushing Balthier, he smiled wryly and rose carefully to flop onto the bed (that he'd been able to stand at all was testament to his will power more than anything else – though the children did not need to know that).

'It is all the swimming.'

Their father replied as Ashe reluctantly let them go so they could settle on the counterpane one on either side of him.

'Swimming?'

Heios asked as Mr Bubbles bounced from the end of the bed over to Balthier and began sprinkling healing spells all over. Balthier (who had no idea what a dreamhare was doing here) regarded the creature sceptically for a moment and then decided not to worry about it.

'Yes. I am all bony and skinny because I have had to swim from the middle of the ocean to here. That is no easy feat, especially with all the octopus, and such like, in the sea.'

Hallie jammed her fingers into her mouth in preparation for an exciting story of pirate daring-do and wriggled a little closer to her father's side. She didn't like her father with a furry face and all pointy edged, but she would forebear it for the sake of being near him again.

'Did you have to fight sea-monsters?' Heios asked (he was reading a book about sea-monsters and wanted to know if they were real).

'Oh, a few; I soon came to terms with the denizens of the deep however.'

Balthier waved a hand airily as he reclined in bed and concentrated on not letting the children see how much pain he was in or how much energy it had taken from him to rise from the bed in the first place. Ashe watched keenly, ready to call the physician and usher the children out of the room if need be.

'Did you fight many Octopus?' Hallie asked keenly, around the fingers in her mouth, 'I had a fight with my octopuses but then we made friends.'

Balthier blinked at her in surprise for a moment and then glanced at Ashe, who mouthed the words 'made of sand' to him and he smiled.

'Hmm, no I found the Octopus of Naldoa to be very hospitable; just now in fact I had a very nice chat with the Prince and Princess of the Octopi……but they appear to have disappeared.'

Hallie was satisfied; it was perfectly natural that her father would not recognise that the Princess Octopus had been her, as her disguises were always excellent. She nodded happily.

For about half an hour more Balthier fielded questions about where he had been and what exciting things he had done, and listened with as much interest as he could, as Hallie and Heios talked over one another while informing him of all he had missed of their growing in the last six months.

Eventually however as his breathing grew shallow and rasping once more and pain tightened the skin around his eyes. Ashe managed to extricate the children from him and herded them towards the door.

'Father has had a long swim and journey home; we must let him sleep now children.' She said in her best no nonsense tone of voice and reluctantly the children said their goodnights and allowed their mother to pull them through the door.

Balthier, thoroughly exhausted, awaited the arrival of the blessed Dr B'Nellin and lay in his bed scratching the head of Mr Bubbles (who knew where he was needed most).

'History in the hands of man,' he wheezed, closing his eyes, vaguely content in the notion that he had fulfilled his bargain with Venat and, in a strange way, finished the work his father had started.

* * *

_A/N: So what did you all think of that revelation, huh? You did catch it, didn't you? ;)_


	37. Chapter 37

**Chapter Thirty-Seven: Still Not Dead Yet: Death, Pain and other Trivialities**

Ashe had not weathered the remainder of the long night well after she had ushered the children from Balthier's room and summoned the doctor to attend him.

To begin with, it had taken an inordinate amount of time to settle the children into bed in the Nalbina nursery that had yet to be fully equipped for the royal children's unexpected arrival.

Then she had had to forestall Larsa and Al-Cid and the others who wanted to see and 'question' Balthier about his recent experiences. In the end Ashe had had to forcibly remind them all that they were guests in her country and if they were not prepared to take rooms in the Keep for the night she was quite happy to find them alternative accommodation in the dungeons.

After her guests had re-discovered their patience and departed to guest rooms, Ashe had returned to Balthier's room only to witness the horrifying sight of the once indomitably resilient sky pirate vomiting blood and convulsing with pain.

Much of the night she sat up with him tearing the inside of her cheeks to shreds as she bit her mouth and did her best to nurse him. In the end, unable to keep her distress from her countenance, Balthier had managed to find breath enough to demand she leave him.

'For the gods own sake, woman, can a man not vomit in peace without an audience?'

What hurt her more than his words was the knowledge that he said it only to spare her the pain of watching him suffer. When Fran appeared, silent as salvation, in the doorway to take over nursing duties it was a blessing to them both. Ashe, however, could not help feeling something of a failure as she departed the room with the sound of Balthier's gasping, choking coughing in her ears.

She had only just climbed into her own bed, in her draughty, unaired bedchamber, when the children arrived, unable to sleep because they too could hear the sound of their father fighting for air as his lungs ejected blood and black bile from his throat. Despite the fact that it was not proper for a queen to do so, Ashe let her children snuggle up in bed with her and mother and children held each other fitfully until such time as the coughing subsided.

Fran had told her that Balthier had lost years of his life; Balthier himself had told her that he had died in truth already. Ashe now found herself wondering if his 'resurrection' was to be only temporary. Watching him last night she had thought he looked like a man with one foot in his grave.

Once dawns early beauty had faded into days hazy light (and she noticed keenly that the storms and sandstorms that had plagued Dalmasca since the Turning had lessened considerably so that she could see sun through the clouds once more) Ashe dressed and left her children to sleep in her bed, as she hurried up the stairs to the top of the tower keep.

'Porridge?'

She heard Fran's voice, and as the Viera rarely spoke in loud voice, Ashe imagined that Fran must be standing close to the door. She could not hear a response from within before she made her entrance.

Balthier, Ashe was both gratified and startled to see, was out of bed and dressed in a warm fawn coloured velvet jacket with embroidered gold thread fastening the sleeves to the body of the jacket so that a line of white shirt could be seen. He was also clean shaven once more and his hair, though still longer than it had been (beginning to carry the slight curl he hated but that Ashe thought was rather endearing) was clean and carefully combed.

Dressed in his habitual finery and seated in a chair by the unlit fireplace, hands clasped over his chest and feet crossed at his ankles, the only evidence of his illness was the sallow pallor of his skin, the sharpness of his cheekbones and the dark, bruised flesh under his shadowed eyes.

'You're up?' Ashe said as she rocked to an abrupt halt in the doorway.

Balthier managed a faint smirk and quirked eyebrow, understanding well what she meant and where her surprise came from, 'Yes, Highness,' and his voice was raw and cracked, 'I am still not dead yet.'

He held out an arm to her as he turned to address Fran once more, 'Yes, porridge, with hot milk and brown sugar…….and possibly a sprinkling of ground nutmeg if some can be found.'

Fran cocked her head as Ashe came and perched on the chair arm and pressed the back of her hand to Balthier's forehead to check his temperature. 'You have appetite indeed this morn.'

Balthier shrugged cheerfully, 'Being dead for the last half year has left me with new appreciation for such things.'

Fran shook her head indulgently and walked to the door, 'You may have to endure an audience with your meal; there are many questions that only you can answer.' She warned as she opened the door.

Balthier actually managed a wheezing chuckle, 'Ah, Fran, you should know better. I am the leading man; the audience must wait on me. One should never sacrifice suspense for the sake of clarity.'

Fran glanced over her shoulder at him and the two shared one of those silent, complex looks between them. Ashe waited quietly for the wordless communion to pass. After a handful of moments Fran inclined her head with just the faintest ghost of a smile lightening her expression and then walked through the door to fill Balthier's breakfast order.

'Don't forget the nutmeg,' he called after her as the door closed, even though the effort of raising his voice even a little caused him to cough and wince painfully. Once Fran's footsteps had receded down the stairs Balthier turned back to Ashe.

'Well Highness, Fran tells me that we are entertaining some prestigious guests, hmm?'

'They can wait until you are better.' She told him staunchly and was bemused when that statement made him laugh, which in turn exasperated his cough.

He put a hand to his chest and quirked an eyebrow, 'What have I told you about making me laugh, Ashe?'

Ashe tried to make herself more comfortable on the edge of his chair (ordinarily such a perch was merely a precursor to sliding into his lap – but now that did not seem appropriate).

'I do not see why that should be funny; Balthier, Larsa and Al-Cid are determined to hound you with questions. Marana has convinced them that you and you alone, can reverse the Turning and free us from Occuria tyranny.'

Balthier was still smiling lazily, in that way of his that seemed to view all life as some charmingly amusing joke. 'And of course neither man is my most ardent admirer; no doubt they also want to assure themselves I am not a puppet of Venat, hm?'

'Like I said, I do not see why you find this so funny.' She stated archly as Balthier snaked an arm about her and tried to tip her from the edge of the chair arm and into his lap. She resisted and he raised both eyebrows in question.

'How now, Highness, what is the matter with you?'

'Balthier, I,' she pursed her lips, 'You are ill. I do not want to put unnecessary pressure on your……lungs.'

He laughed again and pulled her off the chair arm and into his lap, adjusting her with his usual confidence until she was comfortably ensconced sideways across his lap with her feet curled over the chair arm.

'Highness I am quietly suffocating as it is. I am positive you cannot make me feel worse than I do presently.'

A crafty smirk danced over his face and he looked at her through deliberately comically sultry drooped eyelids, 'Also' he purred, 'if a man's wife is afraid to exert unnecessary pressure on his – _lungs' _the smile grew all the more amused as he emphasised that word,'for fear of hurting him he is better off dead.'

Ashe could feel her frown deepening until her brows bunched and her lips thinned in anxiety. She grew rigid in his lap, tense and unhappy. 'Balthier it is not funny.'

She whispered unable to say what she was thinking. Unable to admit that she feared that he would never fully recover; that ever more he would find his freedom curtailed by a body that had suffered too many injuries and hardships in thirty-one short years and was now, finally, beginning to fail.

The average life expectancy of man of good health, and reasonable wealth, in Ivalice was sixty-five years. Her uncle Ondore had already defeated that limit but he, she knew, was enjoying a quiet retirement and making ready to depart the mortal coil even now.

Ashe's own father had lived into his seventies and died by violence before his time, but he was the exception and Balthier, unlike Ondore or even her late father, did not, any longer, have good health to support him.

Fran had said he had lost years of life; but she could not say how many remained to him, or what quality of life he had to look forward too.

Ashe stared fixedly out of the narrow window of the room across from her, staring out with hot eyes at the scudding black clouds lined with vibrant sunlight gold. Her heart hammered in her chest and she fought, biting down on her inside cheek until her mouth filled with blood, not to cry.

Balthier raised a hand to stroke her hair back from her cheek and tuck it behind one ear. 'Take a breath, Ashe, and let go.' He whispered in her ear making her jump as she realised that she had almost forgotten he was there.

Let go? She shook her head hard and curled her fists in her lap as his words haunted her. Did he know? Did he know that he was never going to regain his health and his vigour; how could he sound so blithely cheerful if he did?

'What if you don't improve?' she asked refusing to look at him even though she could feel his eyes on her and his other hand began absently massaging the flesh of her thigh.

'Doctor B'Nellin has assured me that, aside from crises or unforeseen complications, I should recover sufficiently well in a few weeks to be mobile and relatively active once more.'

He chuckled dryly, 'Of course I intend to be active and mobile sooner than that. It would not do to start listening to the advice of doctors this late in the game.'

Ashe continued to stare out of the window watching the pillars of moving sunlight burn through the carpet of rainclouds, radiant and golden, against a backdrop of ominous black and grey. High up in the tower all she could see through the window was sky stretching outward forever. It made her feel very small and very lost inside the questionable security of a tower of stone.

'But?' she whispered, hearing the unspoken caveat. 'What else did the doctor tell you?'

Balthier's fingers tapped a lively tattoo across the pale skin of her thigh as he hitched up her skirt (which she wore modestly to her knees now she was a mother). Her skin quivered and dimpled as his fingers danced.

'But,' Balthier sighed, as if he would really rather not say anything at all, 'I shall be exceedingly lucky if I live to see beyond my forty-fifth birthday…..and in all likelihood I will not be a well man by then.'

Ashe launched herself off his lap and the chair. She had paced to the narrow, arched window before she was consciously aware of it. She spun on her heel to face him.

'That is _not_ acceptable.' The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them and she could barely countenance it when he had the temerity to smirk at her, managing to bite back his mirth on the edge of a laugh.

'_This is not funny._'

If there had been something to hand that she could hurl at him it would already be airborne, as it was she turned on her heels and gripped the narrow stone window ledge in her hands; the corners of the stone digging into her palms as she sought a handhold against the sudden sense of dizziness that took her.

She heard the laborious sounds as Balthier levered himself carefully out of the chair and walked across the room to her. She wanted to turn and order him back into the chair, afraid that every unnecessary exertion was another week, or month, lost from his already truncated life expectancy.

She wanted to deny his words and clap her hands over her ears and not hear anything more. All she could do, however, was stare out of the window at the shifting bands of sunlight puncturing the clouds and casting drifting pools of light over Nalbina and the Highwaste.

Balthier stepped up behind her and slipped his hands around her waist and she almost shook his hands off her; today he could hold her but what of tomorrow and the day after that? How could he do this to her?

'You promised to outlive me.' She told him staring out of the window and refusing to acknowledge his reflected gaze in the windowpane.

His hands massaged her sides as he stepped in closer, 'Yes, and believe me Highness, I would very much prefer to have a twilight act of balding, toothless senility before me but unfortunately life doesn't work that way.'

'Why are you so calm?' she clutched at his hands and pulled them around her more completely. He chuckled lazily and kissed the side of her neck, nuzzling her hair out of the way.

'Because such trivialities are not worth the effort to be anything else,' Balthier smiled against her skin and his chuckle breathed across her throat, 'Also, Doctor B'Nellin's medicine is an amazing pick-me-up.'

'You would call dying a triviality?' She shivered as he continued to nibble her neck and his hands flexed over the beaded and embroidered bodice of her jacket.

'So would you, Highness, if you have died, or nearly died, as often as I. Why should I worry about dying at forty, or fifty, or even sixty, when less than two days ago I was already dead at thirty-one, hm?'

Ashe watched as far in the distance below her, to the north and towards Nabudis, it began to rain. She could see the clouds bleeding down through the horizon like running ink across a tumultuous solid grey canvas. All Ivalice was grey and purple shadow lined with gold.

'I cannot watch you die. I cannot see you dead in a casket; it will break me to go through that again.'

'Then don't watch.' He told her blithely, 'and for that matter I have no intention of rotting inside a wooden box. I shall be cremated quietly, when the time comes, and that shall be an end of that.'

She tried to shove free of him, furious and desperate to escape this conversation, but Balthier somehow, despite everything, managed to equal and defeat her vehemence with his own, stubborn, implacable strength.

He held her about the waist and leaned in to whisper in her ear in firm voice, 'Close your eyes.'

He squeezed her sides when she initially refused and, more to stop herself from crying than in acquiescence, she snapped her eyelids together to seal away the ugly truth.

'Now,' Balthier breathed into her ear and the broken burr of his rasping breath sounded like purring instead of sickness as he pulled her into him until she was leaning just a little against his chest, 'Let go, Highness. Don't think, don't fret, don't do anything at all, but keep your eyes closed and breathe; understood?'

She savagely tore another chunk of skin from the inside of her mouth and Balthier clucked his tongue disapprovingly, 'And would you stop that? Really, Ashe, a queen should know better.'

He ran his hands up and down her side, palms bumping over the seed pearls and gold net embroidery that covered her creamy white jacket and patterned the pale, rose pink skirt she wore. All Ashe could see was the darkness behind her closed eyelids and the golden backlit branches of capillaries. She took in a hitching breath as Balthier continued to glide his hands up and down her body.

'Feel better yet?' he queried casually as he flipped open the bottom two fastenings of her bodice and ran the pad of the thumb of his left hand around the perimeter of her navel.

Ashe began to open her eyes, and Balthier immediately knew, 'Eyes closed, Highness.' He wrapped out sharply with such command that Ashe did so without a moments thought.

'Now, I have been thinking, in between bouts of agonising pain and vomiting,' he began in chipper tones, the same almost brash cheer she had heard in his voice while he piloted collapsing sky fortresses, 'and I have decided that dynastically you have come away from this marriage much more successful than I.'

The only thing that stopped Ashe opening her eyes was Balthier's right hand covering them and then slipping from her eyes to gently click her jaws shut when she began to speak.

'Now, now, listen to my proposal before you comment, hm?'

His left hand continued to idly pet her belly, fingers just threatening the waistline of her skirt. The flesh of her abdomen jumped and quivered as his deft fingers gambolled over her skin. His voice in her ear was roughened velvet and raw silk. His words swirled in her head like incense, thick and dizzying.

'You have two heirs for two thrones but I have not a one. House Bunansa has not been well-served by its most recent scions; I have come to view my heritage a little more favourably of late and decided that the Bunansa name needs to be redeemed, and, the gods know, I am not the man to do it.'

Ashe jolted from the roots of her hair to the soles of her feet as she made sense of what he was alluding too. She tried to whip about to face him, but he held her firm with one arm braced around her stomach and the fingers of the other briefly tangling in her hair, lifting it from the nape of her neck so he could kiss the sensitive skin there.

'You want another child?' her voice rose harshly with her astonishment; surely she had misunderstood him. It was inconceivable he should be thinking such things at a time like this.

'Hm, why not? You're young and I'm dying by degrees; it seems apt.' he replied cheerfully unaware of her stunned reaction.

'Of course,' he continued blithely, 'we can wait until a more opportune time…..perhaps after we come back from the tour of the Tallinak Purveema.'

'Tour of the where?'

Ashe tried once more to face him and once more he wouldn't let her. His left hand pinched her belly teasingly and she jumped as the fingers of his right tickled over the stem of her neck in a virtuoso performance of ambidextrousness.

'Tallinak Purveema; I had been planning something of a family holiday for a while. Alas possession, kidnapping, and a brief spell of drowning, interfered with my plans. Once we have sorted out this Occuria nonsense I think it high time we get away for a while.' He paused and then continued with sardonic humour, 'I'm sure Penelo will be happy to cover for you again in your absence Highness.'

Ashe could feel tears seeping free of her squeezed closed eyelids she sucked in an unsteady breath, 'You have been given but fourteen years to live and you want more children and a holiday; did you leave your commonsense in a crystal somewhere pirate?' she didn't know whether to laugh at him or scream.

Balthier's fingers caught up her tears, tracing the tracks of moisture back up towards her quivering lashes as his fingers caressed her skin; one cheek and then the other.

'Ashe, please, I never had any commonsense to begin with; there never was, and never will be, anything _common_ about me.'

His hand against her belly was firm and solid and warm, tickling over her navel deliciously. Ashe choked back on a wet chuckle, shaking her head.

'Tell me, Ashe,' he whispered, breath warm and sweet against the shell of her ear, 'is this the touch of dead man?' he kissed the side of her throat once again, 'Am I any less than I was for being forty pound the lighter and suffering a cough, hm?'

Her eyes opened and she shook her head again, gnawing on her bottom lip. She turned slowly away from the window and looked up at the lazy, debonair smirk on his face.

She was scared. Looking into his face, already pale and worn with his illness, she did not know how he could smile at all; wasn't he angry? He had been given no more than fourteen years to live at most and time always ran so fast.

Balthier raised an eyebrow, 'Oh come now, Highness,' he began impatiently, 'don't tell me that, once again, you have forgotten my part in this story?'

Ashe blinked and her in-drawn breath was so sharp that she almost choked on it. _His part in the story……? _She gripped his right hand as he reeled her in against him with the left, fingers splayed across her lower back, slipping up under her loosened jacket. Balthier smiled, eyes dancing with the same bright, cynical cheer he always had when facing impossible odds and unfair circumstances.

'I am the leading man.'

……_and the leading man never dies……_

'Times winged chariot might be harrying my heels, but I'm not dead yet, nor do I take kindly to anyone dictating to me my allotment of time on Ivalice; I'll drop dead when I'm ready and not a minute sooner.'

Ashe rose up on tip-toe, as his hands rose to cup her face, so she could kiss him. She wound her arms about his neck and she did not feel how thin he had become or the tremor in his muscles as he tried to hide how much it cost him to stay standing. She determinedly did not hear the rattle in his chest as they broke from one another either.

Such things were but temporal and they did not change who and what he was; they never would. Time and tide waited for no man, but, by the gods, they would make time run.

Balthier pulled away from her and looked irritably at the closed door, 'Where is Fran with my porridge? Sick men should not have to go hunting down their own breakfast.'

He glanced sideways to Ashe and inclined his head towards the door with a sigh and slight cough as he returned to his chair by the unlit fireplace and resumed his pose of nonchalant relaxation.

'What odds will you give me that the inquisition waiting downstairs is holding my food hostage hmm?'

'I will go and find out what is keeping Fran.' Ashe said, not wanting to offer odds against his suspicions. Balthier waved a hand to forestall her, a wicked smirk playing over his lips.

'Let them come up, Ashe. I am feeling the need for some sport at the expense of our illustrious allies.' His eyes simmered with dark amusement, 'I have a few choice words to say to her Grace Marana too.'

Ashe hesitated scrutinising him keenly, 'Are you sure?'

Balthier's couerl with cream smirk grew wider, eclipsing the lingering signs of fatigue and illness on his face, 'Oh, yes. There is nothing like a revelation regards the fundamental nature of hume-kind, to start the day off right.'

Ashe could not stop herself from smiling a little wryly as she realised that she should have known better than to assume that his recent misfortunes would affect Balthier in a predictable manner; after all the leading man would not allow death, pain, or a future of ill-health, to impede upon the flawless perfection of his performance.

The leading man might die, but he would never let the spectre of death stop him enjoying life.


	38. Chapter 38

**Chapter Thirty-Eight: A Call to Arms and a History of Man and Mist**

'Kupo, as you can see, kupo,'

Nono announced in crisp voice as he addressed the humes (and one helgas and one Viera) in the room from the top of the table (which could comfortably seat four). To punctuate his words Nono raised the wooden ruler in his hand and slapped it, sharply, against the easel that stood beside the table upon which the Moogle had previously drawn an extraordinarily complex diagram.

'There is a nexus point in Nalbina in the form of the crystal. We used this, kupo, as the gateway outlet and the six waystones were calibrated using Master Balthier's thaumatic essence to his unique frequency within the Mist channels running from crystal to crystal, kupo.'

Ashe supposed, as she took in the blank and glassy looks on the faces of her allies and friends around the room, that she really should have attempted to rein Balthier (under the guise of Nono and his incomprehensible explanations) in long before now but she hadn't had the heart to do so.

Of all the people in the room only Nono and Balthier understood what the Moogle was talking about and even Fran looked a trifle bemused. In the last forty minutes Balthier could have broken in at any time to summarise and explain how precisely Nono and his companion Moogles had managed to liberate him from his crystal prison but instead he had tucked in to his second portion of porridge and tried to hide his amusement at their expense around every mouthful.

'Kupo we realised months ago, kupo, that without the travelling stone we would not be able to locate Master Balthier's Mist essence. We were most discouraged, kupo, to discover that the travelling stone was withheld from us, kupo.'

Nono shot a reproachful look towards the Gran Kiltias Marana who sat quietly on a dining chair brought in (along with the table Nono perched on) to accommodate the large number of guests now crowding into Balthier's bedchamber. She, like Balthier, was also smiling though Ashe was not sure if she was even listening to what the Moogle said.

Balthier looked up from contemplating of his second bowl of porridge at this statement, 'How now, what's this? Why didn't you have access to the stone?'

All eyes latched to Balthier, now he had deigned to talk. Fran shifted minutely in her stance leaning against the wall by the fireplace close to Balthier's chair.

'It was your wish that the waystone be taken to Marana; in your hand the instruction to do so was written within your cache.'

Balthier's brows bunched and he turned to scowl at Marana, 'That wasn't _my_ will_. _I have no recollection of writing any such note.'

Marana turned her blind, milky eyes to Balthier and smiled beatifically, she too had a bowl of porridge in her hands, having decided that she wanted to try some when she saw Balthier eating. In fact in all her time in Nalbina Marana had done little else but eat.

For a long moment Balthier held that blind, opaque gaze and then turned away, 'Bah, I am beginning to wonder if there is any being that has not spent time mucking about with my subconscious in the last decade.'

'Wait,' Vaan interjected, 'Now I'm really confused.' he paused and reconsidered, 'I mean it's great that you aren't dead, Balthier, but what is going on?'

Balthier glanced at him and airily waved his hand, 'To cut a long, complicated, story short, I was, up until a few short hours before my temporary demise within the Pharos, completely unaware of Venat's…..presence…for lack of a better word, inside my mind.' Balthier fixed his gaze on the serene Marana, 'However when I worked with Marana to get rid of Mishman, I allowed her grace,' and this was said with a curl of the lip, 'to enter my sub-conscious.'

'Wherein she discovered the Occuria's presence?' Larsa asked keenly sitting forward so his elbows rested on his knees (not the posture of an emperor but no one was standing on their dignity right now).

'But,' Larsa's keen gaze regarded Marana, 'Why then did you not inform anyone of Balthier's….affliction….until four years later when the situation was already dire.'

Balthier snorted derisively, finishing his porridge and regarding the empty bowl a little distractedly (he was under doctor's orders to eat only a little, albeit at regular intervals until he regained his strength). 'The question is its own master.'

'Yes.' Marana agreed happily, though who she was agreeing with was difficult to judge.

'The Occuria could not make contact; Balthier's mind was closed and the Corrupt one was jealous of its dwelling and guarded the realm of subconscious from Occuria invasion.'

Vaan was not the only one frowning but he was the only one brave enough to admit to his befuddlement.

'Huh? So you're saying that Venat couldn't take over Balthier because he already had an Esper in his brain?'

Vaan shook his head, glancing warily over to Balthier for a moment, 'Why would Mateus even want to protect Balthier…..I mean its not like it's the friendliest Esper around, right?'

Balthier's lips twitched a little in wry amusement, 'Ah, but then, I'm not the friendliest Hume either.'

He drawled sardonically, then, when he received a number of suspicious looks (and Ashe had to resist the temptation to smack him across the head in admonishment) Balthier deigned to elaborate further.

'Vaan if you had the choice of living out eternity in a small piece of rock or living inside the head of a hume, with the prospect of being summoned now and again, what would you chose, hmm?'

Vaan seemed to think about this for a moment, 'Oh, right, when you put it like that it does make sense.' He subsided.

Ashe, perched on the chair arm at Balthier's shoulder frowned a little at her knight for his constant interruptions and the fact that there were so many questions readily available to confuse the issue.

'All Espers want the chance to walk Ivalice again. That is the reason they allow themselves to be bound, even temporarily, to flesh and blood beings. I have a similar pact with Belias, who I have not returned to his sigil stone.'

'While this is a worthwhile discussion for another time,' Larsa interjected politely clearly thinking along similar lines to Ashe, 'Perhaps we could focus again on what Marana did, and more specifically chose not to do, once she discovered Venat's presence in Balthier's mind?'

Balthier chuckled darkly and turned his head away towards the unlit fireplace and Ashe merely sighed. Everyone else simply looked to Marana.

'A doorway to dreams I did open for the heretic, the undying seeker of deaths embrace. To the sleeping mind of Cidolfus' son I granted the way so that Venat's will be done.'

'What?'

The collective gasp was loud and caustic to the ears but Balthier merely chuckled again.

'Indeed here you are ready to interrogate me, or accuse me of duplicity and treachery,' he glanced sharply at Al-Cid and Larsa, 'and all along the puppet-master was in your midst.'

Balthier arched his eyebrows and let that subtle rebuke sink in before murmuring ironically, 'Don't all rush to tender your apologies, hm?' his tone dripped benign contempt.

Basch looked ready to say something in retort but thought better of it because, as acerbic as he was being, Balthier was pale, wane and breathing with audible difficulty. Basch would hold his tongue as honour dictated that to rebuke a sick man who had nearly lost life, wife, and children was beneath him.

Penelo, who had been sitting by Marana, drew back and stared uncomprehendingly at the Helgas, 'Why would you do that? Why would you side with the Occuria?'

'Because it is not a matter of sides,' Marana said with unusual brevity and succinctness.

Balthier cleared his throat and fished out a handkerchief to wipe his lips. Ashe watched him closely and saw, before he crumpled the handkerchief in his fist, flecks of bright scarlet blood on the white cotton.

'On that at least we can agree.' He muttered tilting his head back against the chair back and closing his eyes. Ashe reached out to stroke his hair from his brow and check his temperature.

'Then you know, eh? Know you what de Occuria want?'

Al-Cid, who had remained quiet for very similar reasons to Basch; a healthy Balthier had more than earned his ill-will but the man before him was fighting hard enough to breathe and Al-Cid would not abuse his friendship with Ashe in such a way (Fran and Dr B'Nellin having explained Balthier's condition and likely prognosis to them all).

Balthier opened his eyes and looked over at Al-Cid, 'Know what they want?' a caustic smile touched his lips but all he did was close his eyes again. It seemed that he might not answer. Then he did in slow, deeply fatigued voice.

'Venat wanted to die; she was tired of an existence that was fundamentally pointless. She was branded a heretic for being, essentially, suicidal but she was never, truly, a traitor to her kind.'

'But she sided with my brother and your father against her brethren,' Larsa looked aggrieved and anxious, as he often did when the spectre of his dead brother was raised, 'how was that not an act of treachery?'

'Because whether Vayne won or I did,' Ashe murmured, sweeping her hand over Balthier's brow as he sank back into the chair and gratefully allowed her to take over narrative duties, 'The Occuria still gained the – _acknowledgement_ – that they desired. Ivalice, and more specifically humes, once again knew the name Occuria where once we had all but forgotten the true nature of our 'gods'.'

'Surely they wanted more than that?' Basch interjected and Balthier smiled wanly eyes still closed.

'It is a shame that nervous little friend of yours is not here, Vaan.' Balthier murmured wafting his hand in the air as he struggled to recall the person's name, 'The little mage; tendency to stutter, wears a lot of green.'

'Kytes?'

'Hmm, yes, thank you, Kytes.' Balthier forced himself to sit up and pay full attention to the situation opening his eyes and looking at each man and woman in turn. 'He would prove to be a useful impartial witness to all this. He is a self-taught expert in Mist, after all.'

Balthier cleared his throat painfully once more and bit back a groan as he addressed the confused and vaguely hostile ring of people watching him keenly. He shook his head ruefully, too tired to be annoyed by their treatment of him.

'Either I or Marana can give you answers, but neither one of us is a credible source. I'm possibly mentally unsound and her grace has made an art form out of lunacy.'

Marana continued to smile sublimely and inclined her head gracefully as if Balthier paid her a compliment. Something passed between them, the understanding of co-conspirators.

Balthier smiled slyly and glanced at Larsa, 'A little bird told me that Archades has developed airships that can swim and pass through Mist currents, is that right?'

Larsa met Balthier's inquiring gaze steadily, 'You are well informed.'

Balthier's sly smile deepened, 'Oh, always.'

He coughed and winced as a sharp pain jabbed through his chest. Ashe turned to him, anxious to do something to assist him and Fran shifted noticeably away from the wall.

Balthier waved them both off, though he caught up Ashe's hand and curled his own fingers through hers. He looked pointedly at Larsa and Al-Cid respectively as he spoke briskly.

'I can tell you that Gerun will not move to recapture or kill me; instead the Occuria will be waiting to see if I'll fulfil Venat's objective and send you, all of you, to the Pharos. The Occuria are tired of shadows, for the shadows don't reach as far anymore; they want to lay their cards on the table.'

Marana giggled, 'And in so doing the pot is stolen for the stakes are of a different sort. The gambler cannot gamble the pot when the game can be neither won nor lost. The game is no game but played all along it has been.'

For a moment silence reigned, as it always did after one of Marana's inexplicable pronouncements, and then, naively hopeful, all gazes shifted to Balthier for a more succinct explanation. Balthier grinned like a couerl with cream, clearly relishing the opportunity to confound them all further.

'Hm, as to that, we'll have to see; I have a trick or two up my sleeve. The Occuria don't know what they play for and their hand is nowhere near as strong as they think.'

Balthier rejoined, matching Marana's impenetrable predictions word for word and causing everyone in the room (Ashe included) to stare at him askance.

He shrugged unrepentant, 'I have had an Occuria with a penchant for poetry twittering away in my dreams for years.' He gave them a dirty look, 'You should all be bloody thankful I'm not talking in rhyming couplets.'

There was very little that could be said in response to that; though Ashe frowned a little and Fran's ears twitched (however in her case that was a sign of amusement).

'To Pharos the humes must go and learn the truth of their negligence; a new direction for Ivalice is this turning.' Marana continued, fixing her blind gaze on Balthier, 'Knowledge must be acquired by those who seek it themselves not given by those who are over-burdened with such unwanted gifts of insight.'

Balthier sighed, 'I'll not have it for long, one way or the other.'

He murmured softly examining the soft tan of his jacket sleeve for any real or imagined smuts of dirt. Ashe felt just the barest shiver of alarm at that ambiguous statement and Balthier, sensing her unease, looked up and flashed her a slight smile, squeezing her hand.

'The airships that swim must launch and the Pharos her ancient secrets to reveal. There are no sides and there is no war; the children of the gods of clay hammer upon the grounded aerie of their ignorant parents. There is no worse a scourge than that of a child scorned.'

After staring at Marana for a handful of beats all eyes swivelled to Balthier once more; Balthier actually rolled his eyes growing impatient with this entire situation.

'You will not believe a word I say.' He pointed out impatiently, 'We all know my capacity for truth is questionable and now, of course, you all think me a lunatic invalid.'

Fran shifted away from the wall and rested her hand atop the back of the wing chair, 'If you speak I will heed you; as I ever have.' She added.

Balthier tilted his head to look up at her and smiled, 'Well of course Fran; you shall be in on my plans, as always.'

He glanced sharply at the others, 'The rest of you can hang as far as I am concerned. The outcome of this Turning is inevitable; your consent is not needed, nor your enlightenment required.' He snapped, sounding alarmingly like his father in his imperiousness.

'Balthier,' Ashe met his eyes with hard gaze. She understood, after a fashion, what he meant but she did not appreciate her husband undoing years of careful diplomacy and international co-operation in a fit of pique.

Marana bounced up from her perch beside Penelo and moved over to the chair. To Ashe's displeasure the Helgas perched on the opposite chair arm to her.

'Ivalice has turned from old battle lines to new horizons. The promises of yesterday are today's reality. Occuria, once gods of shadow, would now ascend to mere mortality. The children of the gods of clay would know what it is to live.'

Marana intoned while scuffing her feet across the carpeted floor as they dangled down from the chair arm.

Balthier nodded, the only one in the room who understood what the Helgas was talking about.

'The Occuria were never our gods; _we are theirs_. Hume magick, the fragments of consciousness accumulated from thousands of years of humes casting magick, created the Occuria.'

Before anyone could react Marana spoke again; sky pirate and prophetess working in a unity of prophecy.

'This is fact and not debate; there is no war, merely the longing of shades for sun. To deny is to invite disaster and to accept is to make Ivalice anew.'

'To the Occuria humes are the gods with feet of clay; the gods who die when the Occuria remain eternal.'

Balthier studied each person in the room in turn, 'They are the Undying but, in truth, they have never known what it is to live. They want what we have and like any unhappy children, they'll tear down their parents to gain such bounty.'

'That is not possible.'

It was Basch who spoke up into the silence so thick it hung heavy upon their heads, oppressive and potentially explosive. Balthier shook his head and Marana continued to smile; just as they had said, the truth they shared was not accepted by their audience.

Larsa glanced from Basch and then to his allies arrayed around the room before looking back to Balthier and Marana.

'How do we know that the fleet will not be captured as Balthier was, should we enter the Pharos? For that matter we do not even though what we are to find there.'

Balthier smiled but closed his eyes and slumped in his chair. Ashe once more spoke as Balthier threaded his fingers through hers in an uncharacteristic act of public affection.

'It isn't what is found there but what we shall put there.' Ashe explained impatiently. This was not a time for words but action and it infuriated her that her allies saw this not.

'The Pharos and Giruvegan are the hubs wherein the Occuria control the Mist faults. If we can take the Pharos from their control we diminish the threat they pose.'

'And turn it against them.' Balthier added dryly, 'I have the accumulated knowledge of an Occuria in my mind. I know how to control the Mist faults,' he paused for a single beat eyes still closed, 'or to fashion a weapon that can cut the Mist arteries completely.'

He opened his eyes and looked triumphantly at each person in the room once again, forcing his meaning into all of them, 'The Occuria's greatest weapon is now ours.'

Balthier sneered derisively as another thought struck him, 'Gerun should have drowned me and had done. Had he never imprisoned me in those Crystals he could have won.'

Larsa, Basch and Al-Cid exchanged glances; each man reacting to the news that they finally had the means to fight back, but still wary.

'The Occuria will know.' Basch said leadenly, 'You said yourself that they were waiting for us to siege the Pharos. They will be waiting to ambush us and we shall not have the chance to gain foothold at the base of their power.'

'No,' Ashe spoke up, 'Gerun will not harm you because while you are in the Pharos learning all that humes have forgotten, Balthier and I will be in Giruvegan, in person. We shall travel there through the crystals.'

'Highness,' Basch was on his feet, and Vaan was only a beat behind him. 'It is too great a risk; you play straight into the Occuria's hands.'

Vaan nodded vigorously, 'He's right, Ashe.'

Ashe stared both men down calmly and neither dared speak up against her; slowly they both resumed their seats.

'Regardless of what they have done to others, Gerun and his Occuria have use for me, and likewise for Venat's vassal.'

She glanced down at Balthier, whose brow was slick with a light dew of sweat and who appeared to have fallen asleep. 'They will not kill us and we can wager our co-operation for your safety.'

Ashe looked from one face to the other around the room, 'However it may seem, Balthier and Marana are right, this is not a war. We are not trying to vanquish an enemy but broker new co-operation with a race of Ivalice that wants a share in the shaping of tomorrow. This does not have to end in bloodshed or death.'

'No, indeed,' Balthier agreed voice barely a thread, but it still carried throughout the room laced with a dark irony, 'this is not a war; just the end of life as we have known it.'

* * *

Hours later and umpteen rounds of questions, veiled allegations, and recriminations bandied about until he wasn't the only one with a sore throat, and Balthier was alone in his bedchamber watching the sun set over the craggy hills of the Highwaste, bleeding through the sky.

The children would be coming shortly and Ashe was corralling the skeletal serving staff of the keep into order to prepare a nice family meal for them all. Dr B'Nellin had left a short while ago and Balthier was feeling pleasantly free of discomfiture. He expected Fran would also be along presently. He did not take his mild gaze from the window as he spoke to the empty air of the chamber.

'You may as well make yourself known while we have privacy.'

The atmosphere in the cosy circular tower room dropped by a handful of degrees and Balthier pulled his jacket more firmly around him. In the reflection of the window glass he watched the visage of Mateus the Corrupt materialise from frozen molecules in the air. Frost flakes coalesced in the frigidity to form an iced trident and then melted into ether once more.

Balthier's breath fogged the air as the temperature plummeted further and the sentient ice sculpture at his back underwent a secondary metamorphosis. A man in his late fifties with tawny salt and pepper hair and a thick set body his son would never inherit emerged from the gleaming facets of ice.

'This is all getting rather convoluted, you know.' Balthier pointed out mildly as he finally turned from the window and returned to his big, wing back chair sinking into it gratefully.

'An Occuria occupying the form of an Esper while pretending to be my deceased father and existing as an extension of my consciousness. Yes, appallingly convoluted.'

The ice sculpture moved as the temperature rose slightly to tolerable levels and the figment, which no longer looked translucent as an ice floe, came and sat down in the comfortable (but less grand) chair facing his own by the unlit fireplace.

'A man must make the best of any circumstance, son.' The figment told him and then, while polishing his half-moon spectacles on his sleeve, looked up at Balthier quizzically, 'You lied to your beloved and her allies when you stated that I had passed out of existence.'

Balthier, who was not, in truth feeling too pleased with himself in his deception, shrugged diffidently.

'It was for the best all round. Ashe would not be pleased to discover our…..arrangement…..and Larsa, Basch, and Al-Cid would stop at nothing to see you and I forcibly parted; I doubt either of us would enjoy that procedure.'

'Indeed,' the figment of Cid demurred, looking pleased with something or other as he gazed meditatively at the cold fireplace, 'They would not listen to you if they knew of our agreement. They would use the anti-mist engine to eradicate my essence from your being; we would both die.'

Balthier, on alert for any suggestion of company arriving, nodded his head impatiently.

'Quite; which is why I am lying to Ashe again.'

He added darkly. The pragmatist in him knew that no marriage could ever survive full disclosure but the man who loved his wife wished it didn't have to be this way.

The figment of Cid, otherwise known as Venat, who now inhabited the 'body' - for lack of a more accurate term – of the Esper Mateus, glanced keenly at Balthier. His eyes, like ice chips, glittered gleefully.

'Gerun will expect an attempt on the Pharos; he will expect that you, or Raithwall's heir, will breach Giruvegan. How will you prevent his triumph when he has long played the conductor to this old, old song? Even I, who have long opposed Gerun, have always found myself his pawn.'

Balthier smiled slyly and leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other as he brushed a hand over his right sleeve. 'You forget, Venat, a pawn can become a queen and it is not the conductor, but the musicians, who control the dance.'

'You have a plan, son of Cid?'

Venat, wearing Cidolfus' face, leaned forward in his chair and a cold breath of chill rose from the phantom illusion. Balthier refused to shiver as his fingers slipped under the fold of his cuff and pulled free the Quidion of Betrayal from within his sleeve.

Balthier chuckled lightly as he flipped the coin between his long fingers, 'A gambler always has an ace up his sleeve.'

He flipped the coin on his thumb and watched it catch the dying rays of the murky sunset before it spiralled, end over end, back down into the waiting palm of Venat; instantly gaining a veneer of frost from Mateus perpetual chill. Venat, in Cid's guise, smiled with deep and dark satisfaction and the son of Cidolfus knew his own smile was a perfect replica.

'If you want to destroy someone, Venat,' Balthier murmured softly, so low that no one beyond the door of the chamber would be able to hear, 'the first thing you must do is give your enemy everything he wants.'

Venat was still smiling Cid's smile, 'So you will allow your friends and allies to walk into a trap; you will allow them to become Gerun's prisoners?'

Balthier shrugged, 'Very few of them are friends of mine.' He pointed out stiffly, 'And in any regard they do not trust me, so they will be wary and ready for treachery. They are more than able to defend themselves against Gerun's minions, in any respect.'

'Do you try to convince me, or yourself?' Venat asked amused. Balthier frowned and then swiftly erased the signs of his obvious discomfort. He leaned over and plucked the frozen Quidion from Venat's hand slipping it back into the fold of his jacket cuff.

'All I need is for Gerun to make his move and the only way to move the mountain is to go to the mountain. I have everything in hand. No one needs be harmed if Larsa plays his cards as I expect him too, and Marana will ensure he does.'

'And then you will destroy Gerun once and for all?' Venat leaned forward and for a moment the façade of Cid faltered in a ripple of Mist like the lights in a glacier.

Balthier smiled – his father's smile -and shrugged looking towards the door as the first hint of movement up the turnpike stair (the click of Fran's heels) alerted him to company. Instantly Venat began to dissolve into Mist and snow flakes.

_You are your father's son in truth; well did I choose you. _Venat whispered as she slipped smoothly back into the depths of his darkest thoughts.

'Oh, no.' Balthier murmured through closed lips, 'My father cannot hold a candle to me.'

The door to the chamber opened and Fran entered the room, frowning as her delicate senses registered how cold it was inside. She looked at him quizzically and Balthier grinned expansively.

'Ah, Fran, good of you to come; I was growing so bored up here with no one to speak too I was contemplating conversing with myself.'

As Fran came forward and bent to light the kindling in the fireplace for his comfort and health Balthier was very conscious of the weight of the Quidion Betrayal in his sleeve cuff. Nevertheless, even when Ashe and the children poured into the room scarce minutes later, his open, engaging smile did not so much as falter.

* * *

_A/N: sigh…..the trouble with epics is that they get very long and very turgid…..I apologise for the last handful of chapters but now the exposition is out of the way we can get to the explosions and the show down…..finally! ;)_


	39. Chapter 39

**Chapter Thirty-Nine: Chaos is a butterfly and order is a fallacy**

_A/N: Hello, I went away on hiatus (two weeks -that's a long time for me) to re-gather my wits about this story but now I am back! ;) _

* * *

Fran tilted her chin as she heard the scuff of shoes on the stone stairs of the turnpike and the rasping rattle of uneven, unhealthy breathing. Rising and uncoiling from her perch in the quiet and now deserted library on the ground floor of Balthier's tower she walked out into the stairwell to meet her partner.

He was sitting on the bottom step with his head almost between his knees and slumped against the stone wall. He was shaking with exertion and the Dreamhare crouched on the step beside him looked equally exhausted from numerous healing attempts.

'You would survive one demise to tempt another, it seems.' She chided him gently once it seemed that he had his breath back somewhat.

'Gods be damned but there are too many stairs in this tower.' He groaned making a swiftly aborted attempt to stand before slumping down on the step. Pale and dappled in sweat he contrived to smile faintly at her.

'I knew you would be waiting, Fran.' He quirked an eyebrow, 'I hear that you have reconciled with the Wood?'

Fran picked up the Dreamhare and placed the creature in Balthier's arms (he had most need of it) she then sat down on the step beside him.

'Strange to me, it is, to once more hear the voice of the Wood – to see once more the Green Way and all her paths laid out across the land.'

'Hmm,' he murmured absently scratching the head of the Dreamhare between the ears, 'Jote and Mjrn are well I take it?'

'Mjrn wishes to see the cities of man and many Viera would travel to take seed from Golmore to germinate throughout Ivalice; the Wood could be vast once more and many Viera would see the lands that humes built for themselves.'

Balthier studied her keenly, 'And dear, jingoistic Jote?'

Fran resisted the impulse to frown, knowing that Balthier was deliberately teasing her, now that he could do so without rubbing salt into old wounds. 'Jote is child and servitor of the Wood and Green Way. That path she will follow, Wood's voice she heeds. The loss of Golmore grieves her but know she does that Golmore will rise again anew.'

'Yes,' Balthier smiled impishly, 'Had I known that all it would take was a forest fire to break her intransigence I would have torched the place years ago.'

Fran gave him a very level look, 'I strike you not solely because you are ill. I do not find your humour entertaining.'

Balthier chuckled which in turn became a stifled cough, 'Oh, but I do.'

Fran sighed, 'You play dangerous games when you are so newly restored to life and liberty. Do you follow your father's path or is the breath of cold and Mist that enshrouds you of some other nature?'

The moment she had laid hands upon his sleeping form she had sensed the presence, faint and resting, of the Occuria within him; she had raised no alarm because she had also sensed, with mind renewed by restoration to all knowledge Viera, that the greatest influence upon Balthier (for good or ill) was himself.

'Ah,' Balthier gave her a level look in return, 'There's no fooling you, Fran. How long have you known?'

'I did not know until now,' Fran told him frankly, 'but merely sensed it. Mateus' cold but too much knowledge and power for the Esper alone.' She cupped his chin in one long hand and scrutinised him closely as she met his brown eyes. 'Do you flirt with your father's evil or are you merely pawn of circumstance?'

Balthier smiled wanly, 'Fran please, I have never been a pawn of circumstance; I made a deal, it's true, but I assure you the only bad influence I am under is my own.'

Fran quirked an eyebrow letting go of his chin, 'That reassures me not; know I do what mischief you are capable of.'

He smirked, 'Too true, and to that end there is something I would like you to do for me.'

Fran raised both eyebrows, 'Indeed?'

'Yes, I'd like you to take a trip to see Hamish he's been keeping something safe for me, that we are going to need. Also, it would be good if you could summon Mjrn to Rabanastre. It would be better if it was Jote but frankly she scares me, so let us make it your more genial sister.'

Fran shifted slightly, shaking her hair behind her back, 'You would weave my kin into your newest scheme?' she asked him in very steady voice; he would do well not to attempt to lie to her now.

Balthier smiled, unabashed, 'Why not? I am gambling mine in this venture, after all.'

Fran considered his words, 'How so?'

Balthier flicked a coin from inside the fold of his sleeve cuff and twiddled it between his fingers, flipping the dulled Quidion of Betrayal over his knuckles.

'I have a plan that will negate the threat of the Occuria once and for all. Sadly I fear that it might cost me a handful more of the scant few years I have left to live, and more grievous to me, even if I succeed, my only reward is like to be immediate divorcement.'

* * *

_Two weeks later_

To Ashe the forest of inter-connected glass tubing, spiral wires, cables and lead piping criss-crossing the ceiling of the Nalbina cellar room was disturbing in the extreme but not as worrying as the irregularly shaped, multi-faceted golden brown crystal that had been uprooted from its centuries long plot in the middle of Nalbina town to be replanted in the centre of this workroom.

The crystal sprouted wires, metal clamps, strange sensors and other peculiar objects of an incomprehensible scientific nature from every surface. It also hummed softly, at an almost subliminal level, as it crouched in the centre of crowded space.

Moogles rushed hither and thither in organised chaos and flurries of activity. The occasional exclamation of 'kupo' punctuated the sonorous music of hammering, tinkering and fiddling with a variety of tools and apparatus Ashe had no name for. A field of invisible, but palpable, energy filled the small chamber and rifled the skin at the back of her neck.

At the centre of the hub of activity Balthier sat in a straight backed chair fiddling with a nest of wires and tightening something or other with a strange tool that vaguely resembled some manner of screw-driver. Sitting at his feet Hallie was cheerfully braiding the wires into elaborate knots while Heios sorted nuts and bolts and re-arranged the tools in his father's tool pouch.

The hume scientists from Draklor remained in the periphery of the room much as Ashe remained with her back against the wall nearest the door (she had never been completely comfortable surrounded by too much science). Larsa had insisted that his scientists be present for all experimentation on the Mist Faults and his mistrust of Balthier was almost insultingly overt.

Not that Balthier himself seemed to care. In fact he seemed to be going out of his way to encourage their allies to mistrust him; Ashe suspected she knew why but hesitated to call him on it; she very much hoped she was wrong in her suspicion.

In the last fortnight since Balthier's miraculous return to the living the Occuria of Giruvegan had been uncomfortably quiet. The only indication that they were aware of events in hume run Ivalice was the heightened concentration of Mist surrounding Giruvegan and the Pharos. It seemed like as not that Gerun was fortifying his strongholds in preparation for a long siege; the Occuria had to know of the planned attack on the Pharos.

Ashe glanced over at Balthier, in the last two weeks he had undergone a battery of tests and dubious magickal procedures to enhance his strength and speed his recovery.

Ashe had been opposed to the whole thing; her husband was so stuffed with magickal curatives and strengtheners that she thought he should be glowing brighter than the damned crystal. However, Balthier had been content to be eradiated with vast (unhealthy) amounts of magick over a very short period of time and his argument when she had told him he risked Mist poisoning was as follows:

_Been there, done that. Frankly Highness, under the circumstances what difference does it make? _

Although this blasé attitude hardly reassured her Ashe could not precisely argue the point or the necessity for the procedure. Balthier needed to be mobile and at least partially able to defend himself when they breached Giruvegan.

The door to the chamber opened to admit Larsa and Ashe curtly nodded to him in response to his own polite head bow of greeting. Larsa, grown tall and spare, and swathed in black velvet doublet with slashed sleeves in Solidor red looked about the room before settling his sharp eyes on Balthier; Ashe narrowed her own eyes, she did not appreciate the way her allies had been treating Balthier of late. He was not the enemy nor had he ever been.

'Balthier.'

'Your Lordship.'

Balthier did not bother to look up to address Larsa and continued to examine the component in his hands. Heios stared up at Larsa thoughtfully and Hallie curled her arms around her father's right leg; she had become quite clingy since Balthier's return and watched her father for any signs that he might vanish on her again.

'I have been in discussion with Dr B'Nellin,' Larsa continued not reacting to Balthier's lack of deference (it was a diplomatic grey area whether Balthier was still a citizen of Archadia and therefore nominally under Larsa's sovereignty or whether he was a nationalised Dalmascan via marriage to the queen – for the most part everyone ignored the issue for simplicities sake).

'Good isn't he?' Balthier interrupted Larsa, 'I dislike physicians as a matter of habit but I must concede that B'Nellin is a rather good sort.'

'I…yes, he is. Now Balthier, he and I were discussing a certain aspect of your recent experiences…'

'Interesting lineage, the man has too; Dalmascan name, but his mother was half-Nabradian and half-Archadian and he was educated in his craft in both Bhujerba and Archades.'

Balthier once more interrupted Larsa and now everyone in the room was watching this tête-à-tête with interest. It was clear to all, Larsa included, that Balthier was deliberately baiting the Emperor.

'Am I to assume from your evasions that you have some idea of what I came to discuss?' Larsa asked in a voice as dry as dust.

Balthier finally deigned to look up at him, 'You know what people say about assumption, your lordship.' He purred.

Ashe pushed away from the wall. The tension in the room was palpable and Hallie was clamped so tightly to her father's leg Ashe thought that her daughter's cheek would be patterned with the creases in Balthier's linen trousers, as she buried her face into his shin.

'I could force the issue,' Larsa pointed out sounding just slightly annoyed. 'Al-Cid agrees with me that there is justification and I believe a vote of the other concerned parties would favour me.'

Balthier flashed Larsa a wolfish smile as Ashe stepped forward, delicately tip-toeing over the mess of wires covering the floor and inserted herself into the fraught beginnings of the confrontation.

'Larsa what is this about? What issue are you trying to force?'

Balthier chuckled, 'He and Al-Cid, and possibly Basch, although his precise diplomatic credentials are somewhat fluid, suspect that I am lying.' Balthier murmured pleasantly, 'They think that I am under the influence of Venat; admittedly I would make a very dapper fifth column for the Occuria.'

Ashe frowned. She had suspected as much herself but had hoped that her friends and allies would hold their tongue.

'Balthier is not possessed.' She said very levelly looking Larsa in the eye. Alas even at the tender age of twelve Larsa Ferrinas Solidor had had the wherewithal to withstand Ashe's steel-eyed glare.

'Indeed, but with all due respect to you Lady Ashe, neither was his father.'

The words, a challenge more overt than Ashe might have expected from the subtle and even-tempered Larsa, shocked her and she looked sharply to Balthier who had leaned back in his chair with a slight, amused smile playing over his lips.

'Hmm, quite true,' Balthier's voice was that sweet, melodiously even timbre that was far more dangerous than raised voice and sharp words. 'What of it?'

For the first time, as the words left his lips, Ashe allowed herself to admit her own, tiny fear. The fear that Larsa was not being unreasonable and spiteful in his suspicion, that perhaps, when given the choice of never seeing his wife and children again, or survival at the price of servitude to the heretic Occuria already in residence in his head, even Balthier would agree to an alliance with the entity that had led his father to his doom.

She could not dispute that Balthier was pragmatic enough to barter his soul if the price was right…….but still it was one thing to sell your own soul and another to risk that of your children. Ashe's eyes fixed on Heios who sat peaceably at his father's feet and Hallie who clung to her father (who she worshipped) as if he was the centre of her existence. The certainty that Balthier would never hurt his children had been enough, until now, to banish any doubts she had; _until now_.

'I think there is an inconsistency in your story, Balthier.' Larsa said.

Around the room the Moogles had stopped their work and downed tools. It was difficult to say that the Moogles appeared hostile (Ashe could not truly envision a hostile Moogle) but there was a tangible presence of wariness and inhospitality towards Larsa and his questioning.

Balthier raised his eyebrows questionably but said nothing. He reached down to pull Hallie into his lap and Ashe almost reached out to snatch her away. Tongue-tied in her suspicion and guilt Ashe was suddenly not at ease with the children being so close to their father. Still to remove them would be to make clear that in her heart of hearts she agreed with Larsa and Ashe was not yet prepared to do that.

'Mateus,' Larsa explained watching Balthier intently. 'The Occuria, if the legends are to be believed, created the Espers who later rebelled; regardless it is interesting that Mateus was a part of you when you were dispersed within the Mist Faults and rejoined you immediately afterwards.'

Balthier maintained the smile, 'I do not find that very interesting; get to your point.'

Larsa nodded and Ashe had the feeling that he was as aware as she was that Balthier had not once chosen to defend his innocence or deny that Venat had not perished after all. Ashe wanted to believe that Balthier was just playing his cards characteristically close to his chest, but still she wished he would simply come out and say to Larsa, as he had to her (hadn't he?), incontrovertibly, that Venat was gone.

'I would like you to come with me back to Archades. In Draklor there is a device that can separate the Esper from your psyche without harming you. I think, to avoid any and all suspicion and recrimination, this is the best course to take. I am returning to the Empire at sundown to supervise the final preparations of the anti-Pharos armada I request that you join me.'

'That is out of the question!' Ashe exploded. She had not minded hugely that she had been mostly ignored by the two men as they battled wits and egos but now her indignation knew no bounds.

Balthier reached out to squeeze her hand, 'Highness, it is fine. I rather want to see these new-fangled aquatic airship anyway.' He smiled snakelike at Larsa, 'of course if I am Venat's willing, or unwilling, co-conspirator our dear Lord Larsa might think twice about returning us to Dr Cid's former lair, hmm?'

Larsa did not smile in return, 'I think you will find Draklor quite a different place than the one you once knew.'

Ashe, made powerless by her own suspicions more than anything else, did not like Balthier's answer at all.

'Is that so? I shall look forward to it then.'

* * *

Hours later once they had pried a hysterical Hallie from her father (she did not want to let him go and for a five year old she had a shockingly tenacious grip) Ashe stood on the royal airship launching pad just outside the fort (created after Balthier, in frustration, had docked the Strahl right in the centre of the Nalbina marketplace – incinerating much of the wares, produce and stalls therein) under a blood red sunset (the Mist storms had faded, but the weather was still unsettled) waiting to see her husband off.

As she embraced him she whispered fiercely in his ear, 'Whatever you are planning, remember that I will do whatever I must to defend my family and my kingdom – from _whoever_ might pose a threat.'

Balthier enfolded her in his arms and his scent, part airship oil, part crisp linens, part leather and part some indefinable scent that was purely him, edible and enticing, filled her senses like a caress. He kissed the side of her neck and whispered in her ear.

'I would expect nothing less. All I would ask is that you not be too hasty, _princess_.' He purred the old title, the old endearment that always tripped off his tongue like the sweetest of blandishments, or the most sensuous of curses.

Ashe pulled back from him aghast, once again, that he had not denied that he would ever pose a threat to his family, and the man had the temerity to wink at her. He stroked his palms down her bare arms to her wrists and took up both her hands, pressing a kiss to each knuckle of each hand in an unusual show of public affection; all the while never breaking eye contact with her. His brown eyes bored into her own and the intensity of his look did not match the flirtatiousness of his voice.

'I am my father's son, highness, but I have never been his substitute.'

He turned away with a swish of jade green suede long coat with silver filigree embroidering before Ashe could react and boarded the Archadian light aircraft with an ironic bow to Larsa.

Ashe waited until the airship was no more than a memory on the bloody horizon before she looked down into the palms of each hand. Holding her breath she turned over the Quidion coin Balthier had slipped into her palm under the guise of his farewell. _Betrayal; _the dulled silver was surprisingly cold in her hands. When she closed her fist around the coin a strange sensation of electric cold shivered up her arm, almost as if something had slithered free of the coin and seeped into her veins.

She dismissed the notion with a sharp shake of her head; she had a headache all of a sudden. As she walked over the wide, smooth paving of the Nalbina courtyard, the fast flowing shadows of encroaching dusk harrying her heels, Ashe could not help the creeping feeling that she was not alone. When she glanced back at her shadow for a moment she thought it moved without her.

It was almost enough to make her think that these old pirate coins were truly cursed, Ashe thought dryly, examining the coin in the safety of her own chambers, but then she did not believe that Balthier would ever pass onto her a curse.

(She did not want to think over why he had handed her yet another Quidion – or how he came to possess so many of the damnable things in the first place. Once again she had her suspicions and once again she feared being proved right.)

Sitting with her face to the window, positioned to catch the last dying rays of the sun as it fell to the purple swathed undulating landscape of the Highwaste, its high crags and steep inclines a myriad patchwork of rust red shade and indigo velvet darkness, Ashe did not notice that the small fire in the grate winked out as the temperature in the tower room plummeted abrupt.

Behind Ashe's back the shadows of the room coalesced with liquid grace and the frigid air glittered with moisture condensed into particles of frost.

'Oho, Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca, we meet again!'

* * *

Balthier stroked his fingers over the fine silver thread embroidery of his coat sleeve. He did not usually favour green but he could not deny he looked good in it. The long coat helped to hide the loss of definition in his shoulders and the scrawniness of his frame; not that he would admit that his increased interest in his wardrobe was an attempt to overcompensate.

Larsa was deliberately not talking to him, neither man felt the need to pretend amiability now they were in flight. However Balthier did feel the need to needle the highbrow Emperor a little.

'I hear congratulations are in order.' He spoke across the plush hush of the well furnished cabin. Larsa, who had been sifting through a large budget of official papers brought to him by one of his attendants glanced over in surprise.

'Pardon?'

'Congratulations,' he smiled, 'Our Penelo is with child, or so Ashe tells me.'

'Oh, yes,' Larsa stammered, 'thank you. Yes, it is very good news.'

Balthier smirked at Larsa's tongue-tied expectant father glow; the naïve sap. 'Hmm. What is the preference; boy or girl?'

The once and evermore boy emperor smiled softly, 'I do not mind; though Penelo is convinced that she is carrying a son. I am not quite sure where that conviction comes from but she is happy enough.'

Larsa frowned abstractedly before continuing, 'There was some fears – an injury she took many years ago to the abdomen, and then there was the swelling fever that took me last summer…' he shook his head, reasserting the smile, 'Regardless she is in good health and so too is the baby.'

'Hmm,' Balthier murmured in noncommittal manner. He had grown bored with the discussion, well aware of the fact that Penelo's fertility had been in question within Archades for a number years (no one dared suggest that it was the Emperor who was deficient – except of course the oft loquacious Jules that is).

'Yes, becoming a father changes a man, which allows me to segue quite nicely to other business.' He admitted quietly, more to himself then the Emperor.

Larsa stopped smiling and looked keenly at Balthier, 'Other business?'

'Hmm,' Balthier rested his head back against the red velvet headrest of his chair in the comfortable, walnut wood enamelled cabin. 'I want you to know that what I do is not personally motivated. We are not friends, but I have no particular ill-will against you.'

Larsa tensed, 'Meaning?'

Balthier shrugged indifferently, 'Meaning I am not intending any harm to come to you and if you do what I say when I say you will live to see your child born.'

Balthier smiled, the cold smile he had used a hundred times before as he robbed rich men of their livelihoods or boarded airships' to pilfer cargo holds in his days of piracy. He flipped the Quidion of Mind on one thumb and it danced end over end across the air to land on top of the pile of papers sitting on Larsa's lap.

'However if it is a choice between your family and mine, I shall choose mine.'

He said simply without undue melodrama. He would defend his family even if, by doing so, he forsook any chance of their love and forgiveness. Was that selflessness or merely a deficit of trust and imagination on his part? Would a nobler, more honest man have derived a better plan or did it take a conniving bastard to finally defeat Ivalice' great and sinister would-be gods and puppet masters once and for all?

'What have you done?' Larsa demanded, always quick minded. 'What manner of underhandedness do you attempt this time?'

The younger man rose to his feet smoothly and reached to pull the cord to summon his personal guard. Balthier sat back in his chair and smiled. Larsa was Archadian through and through and despite all his wealth he had not been able to resist taking up the shiny coin into his sweaty palm without conscious thought, which was precisely as Balthier required.

It was at that moment that the very air of the cabin seemed to twist and condense with the crushing weight of white burning Mist. There was the scream of failing airship engines and, from a tear in the fabric of reality that split the outer wall of the cabin, Professor Kry stepped through.

'Ffamran Bunansa, we meet at last.' He quavered seeking gravitas and managing only a reedy whine.

Balthier smiled, 'Professor Kry,' he nodded to the unkempt and foul smelling geriatric bag of sallow flesh, bone and rags, 'Where is your master? I have brought him a new body to play with.'

Kry's eyes jerked to Larsa who was staring at Balthier with white faced fury held in check only by years of diplomatic training.

'Ashe will not forgive you for this.' Larsa told him with admirably calm and steady voice. The young Emperor knew the best weapon at his disposal and did not waste breath on a hopeless appeal to Balthier's better nature; such a thing, if it had ever existed, was long gone now.

Balthier shrugged, 'I know.' he said softly. _We all reap what we sow and I have lived on borrowed credit far too long. _

It was then that the airship was swallowed completely into the Mist, dragged through ancient eldritch channels of magick, torn into its component atoms along with its occupants, and deposited into the heart of Giruvegan.

* * *

Ashe was not fast enough to react, upon recognising the voice of the dead man, and could do nothing but gape in astonishment as the frost glittering image of Cidolfus Bunansa glided across the tower room leaving a trail of crusted ice and snow in his wake and settled in the high backed chair across the room.

The dead man steepled his fingers and peered at her genially from over his half-moon spectacles.

'Mmm-hmm, we have much to discuss my dear,' the man (who could not possibly be here - Ashe had seen him evaporated into thin air) smiled resting his stubble coated chin on the tips of his steepled fingers as he leaned forward elbows on knees.

'I hope that you do not require me to address you by honorific; we are, after all, family now. Are we not?'

'Y….you cannot be here…this is not possible.' Ashe stammered, groping blindly for the dagger she kept in her thigh sheath at all times.

The visage of Dr Cid leaned back in the chair and splayed his fingers over the armrests comfortably. He propped his right foot on the knee of his left leg and regarded her myopically through his spectacles.

'Eh? Oh, but you are quite mistaken, for you see, I never left.'

'No!'

Ashe lunged forward, the dagger held in her hand, point forward. She thrust expertly towards Dr Cid's sternum, angling the thrust upwards to slip under and up behind the breastbone, her aim true and unwavering for the phantom's heart.

A wave of agonising, frost-bitten cold almost caused her to drop the knife as she threw herself at the figure and for a second she met the resistance of another body before suddenly she was falling face first into the leather upholstery of the chair, her wrist jarring backwards painfully as the dagger found its home in the back of the chair.

Ashe spun around, scrabbling off the chair and wrenching the dagger out of the chair. Her eyes scanned the room but she could see no sign of the phantom except for slush puddles drying on the floor and the pervasive and unnatural chill in the air.

Almost involuntarily Ashe found her gaze settling on the Quidion coin Balthier had deposited with her as he made his departure. The coin of Betrayal had a rim of frost growing like a furred halo from its rounded edges.

_Quidion - Betrayal – Cid – Balthier._

Beyond the window the last vestiges of the sunset faded behind the ugly, jagged rises of the Mosphoran hills. The small chamber was plunged into momentary darkness far more intense then seemed purely natural. Ashe shivered in the chill as she strained her senses for any suggestion that the phantom (or whatever it was) was still in the room; her eyes stared blindly at the coin on the windowsill.

She was still staring at the coin, deliberately not thinking of anything, when Vaan clattered into the room.

'Ashe….Ashe..?'

Slowly she turned to face her Captain, but she could not find words even when Vaan stopped, frowning as he took in the over turned chair with the whole in it, the icy chill in the air of the small room and the fact that Ashe still held the dagger close to her in readiness.

Ashe met his confused and anxious eyes with her own, flat and guarded gaze. Carefully she re-sheathed the dagger.

'Ashe – the Archadian cruiser – Larsa and Balthier….' Vaan hesitated, but was too upset to shuffle his feet of rub at his neck.

'It's gone Ashe. It was flying over Jahara, flying south to avoid the Mist storms over the straits of Betlana and suddenly there was this explosion of light and the ship was just gone. Even the Archadian flying escort don't know what happened. There wasn't any debris so it couldn't have been an explosion.'

'Gone?'

She repeated dully walking numbly over to the window and picking up the coin. She stared down into the face of the tarnished silver – interestingly the image of betrayal was a smiling face and for just a moment she saw Balthier's smile as he said his goodbyes and slipped her the cursed coin.

'You knew didn't you Balthier? You knew that Larsa would demand you go with him and you knew this would happen; you planned all this.'

The conviction settled into her stomach like a sickness; a slowly expanding lump of ice. He had planned to sow the seeds of suspicion from the beginning. He had lured Larsa into action and Gerun had waited for this very moment to seize them both.

The Occuria had no physical body -they had to possess corporeal life forms to interact in Ivalice – that was the only solid fact of their existence that she was sure of. Gerun had one old, tired man's body to call his own but the twenty-one year old body of the Emperor of the largest still existent Empire in Ivalice would be a much more attractive offer.

Balthier had planned all this……no, he and his _father_ had planned all this.

Ashe closed her hand around the coin, the cold silver cutting into her palm. She looked up at Vaan, 'Is Penelo still here?'

Vaan nodded numbly, 'She's pretty distraught.' He said the unfamiliar word carefully, as if trying it out.

'Where? Take me to her, we must launch the Archadian Armada now; this is the distraction we needed.' - Or was it merely the denouement of a betrayal wrenching in its irony and inevitability? The old phrase like father, like son, whispered insidiously through her mind.

_I to Giruvegan go - follow if you dare. _Another Bunansa, a familiar arrogance, the same likely destination. Was she to follow the son as she had the father, straight to the heart of Occuria power once again?

Shaking herself from her spinning, unanswerable thoughts Ashe did not give Vaan opportunity to question as she grabbed his arm and propelled him along down the turnpike stairs.

'We only have a short time,' Ashe said as they flew down the stairs, 'Balthier is using Larsa as bait to distract Gerun,' or at least that was what Ashe hoped and she would not allow herself to consider the alternative, 'he's going to offer Gerun Larsa's body to detract attention from our attack. We have to break the Occuria Mist paling, before Larsa's soul is forfeit.'

Or before Balthier betrayed them all though in many respects it was already too late for that - Ashe was not sure she could forgive this greatest of secrets revealed; this most final of betrayals of her trust.


	40. Chapter 40

**Chapter Forty: Sowing, Reaping, Begging, Deceiving and All Things Else**

For the second time in his lifetime Balthier experienced the exquisite torment of sensation that was rendered from being torn down to his component parts, the last ergs of his soul scattered to the four raging winds of fate, destiny, life and eternity and then forcibly borne aloft along those ferocious currents for a duration that spanned beyond the reaches of the mortal mind's capacity to reckon time only to be re-constituted without ceremony or tenderness deep within the static heart of Giruvegan.

'Ugn,' once he was able to send the necessary commands to his body Balthier levered himself up on his forearms and looked about at the cold, sterile, empty whiteness of the inner sanctum of Giruvegan's crystal heart, 'Well, that was better than last time.'

His Lordship Larsa Ferrinas Solidor was still experiencing the delights of post Mist dissipation and retching dreadfully as he crouched in a ball of misery. Balthier considered making some manner of comment about the less than hardy constitution of Emperor's these days but decided, wisely, that he was pushing his luck far enough by abducting the man.

So instead Balthier turned his attention to Professor Kry, who had come with them through the maelstrom. The old man was watching him keenly from beneath heavy, furred brows. Balthier, who was sitting down with his back against one smooth, almost glass-like white wall to conserve energy was reminded powerfully of his childhood when he would sit quietly (Ffamran had never been a noisy child) dismantling some manner of mechanical plaything while his father and his former mentor argued over some highbrow scientific theorem.

'I must say Professor Kry, you haven't changed one iota; my condolences' to you.'

He told the man genially thinking that it was a fairly damning indictment of the man that he still looked ramshackle and decayed to the degree that even death would not touch him. Balthier had seen re-animated corpses who looked and smelled better than Kry.

'Witty boy,' Kry snapped in a voice as grating as sandpaper and sharp as a fistful of paper cuts, 'I remember you when you were nowt but a drooling babe. A whelp brat then and a whelp brat now.'

Balthier arched one eyebrow. Of all the accusations that could be rightly levelled against him being called a 'brat' seemed fairly benign. As for the 'whelp' part, due to his mother's untimely death in childbed he had never actually been 'whelped' or weaned but now was not the time to argue semantics.

Larsa had finally stopped vomiting and was now in the process of trying to find his feet. Balthier was distantly sorry for him as he well knew how monstrously unsettling being scattered into atoms and set loose through the fabric of time for the first time could be.

'Cheer up, your lordship, it gets easier the more often you find yourself physically evaporated and spiritually re-aligned.'

His attempt at friendliness did not garner the reaction he might have hoped for; alas Larsa's ceremonial rapier, Joyeux, had been brought through the Mist lines with him and Balthier now had the opportunity to examine the sharpness of the point as it wavered a few scant particles of air away from popping out his right eye. Larsa did not look overly stable on his feet and the point of the blade wobbled dangerously.

'You are a traitor to your own species. What manner of man betrays an ally to his own enemies or have you taken your father's part and now seek your own false godhood?'

Balthier reached out and batted the edge of the rapier away, 'I've no interest in deification your lordship, the responsibility godhood requires would chafe on my nerves.'

Oddly enough being back here in the empty, heat and cold devoid cavernous kernel of the Great Crystal seemed to alleviate some of the pain he had been in consistently since his return to existence, which was convenient as he was bound to need all the physical advantage he could muster soon enough.

'Then you are a traitor with no cause.'

Larsa told him damningly and Balthier rolled his eyes and cast his gaze over their surroundings as he rose to his feet. Larsa, clearly not willing to kill him despite his words, lowered Joyeux and stepped back.

This was an area they had never visited all those years ago when Dr Cid lured Ashe to a meeting with her secret puppet masters. However Balthier, with the virtue of Venat's borrowed insight, recognised the white, silent chamber as if it were his own bedchamber.

'Treachery is a tricky thing,' Balthier murmured blandly stepping close to Larsa, who interestingly, was actually an inch or two taller than he was. 'As a Solidor you should know that a man is only truly traitor if he betrays himself, all other concerns are simply transitory and loyalty is nothing if not a false _coin_.'

As cryptic messages went Balthier thought that even Marana herself could not have managed to better obscure her meaning. Balthier stared Larsa down and hoped that the youth's quick wit would discern his true meaning. It was imperative to his plan that Quidion of Mind had come through the Mist Faults along with Larsa.

Larsa gave him the reaction he had been hoping for when the youth's hand fluttered close to the pocket of his black velvet frockcoat. Repressing his smile Balthier turned to Kry.

'Well, lead on then, man, take us to your leader.' He bowed with a flourish to the loathsome, half-rotted shambles of a man with a lazy smile.

Kry peered at him suspiciously, 'I don't trust you, boy. You were always sly, more so than your father.'

'I shall take that as a compliment.' Balthier smiled thinly, 'Now chop, chop minion, Gerun and his calcified cronies are no doubt waiting for us.'

Both Kry and Larsa gave Balthier odd looks; the sort of looks that said quite succinctly that they did not trust him as far as they could throw him and that neither man thought him quite sane. Of course such looks were hardly new to Balthier who had been on the receiving end of those sorts of appraisals since he ran from his home and took up pirating some fifteen years ago. He smiled back at them both inscrutably.

'I am no minion. The only way to avoid calamity such as Nabudis is to abide by the laws of the Occuria; humekind are savages we are not fit to rule ourselves.' Kry snapped harshly.

'Hmm, so that's it, is it? You have yoked yourself to false gods to avoid facing the responsibility of what you helped to destroy. Yes, that should absolve your conscience no end.' Balthier murmured cheerfully and a greyish, mottled flush crawled up Kry's sallow skin.

He had wondered what facile justification the old man had come up with to explain his circumstances. He had met many a sinner who had turned, with rapturous hope and blind obedience, to religion to avoid dealing with what he was and what he had done.

Balthier might not like consequences anymore than the next man but at least he was far too faithless to excuse his crimes by virtue of dubious salvation. He was under no illusions that when he yet again, and permanently, passed over to an afterlife (if such a thing existed) he would be faced with a large number of less than happy shades intent on making his eternity less than salubrious.

The wages of sin were steep after all; Balthier had always known he would be called to account eventually. However, given half a chance in any realm of limbo or damnation, he would still try and outrun his creditors – it was just the principle of the thing.

'What reason is there for me to comply?' Larsa inquired darkly, 'I am armed and you are not, and I will fall on my sword before I allow myself to become pawn of the evil that addled my brother's wits and plunged my homeland into a monstrous war.'

Balthier quirked an eyebrow; that was a novel explanation for Archadia's expansionism – it was all the Occuria's fault. Well, Balthier gave the equivalent of a mental shrug, whatever helped little Lord Larsa sleep at night.

_Still………_

'I think your lordship, that raging megalomania and a penchant for killings one's family also contributed to the addling of Vayne's wits.' It was not wise but Balthier could not quite resist making some comment. Larsa's blue eyes flashed in angry defiance.

'And you Balthier, what sickness has led you to this path? You were always a callous and selfish man, but I once believed you to have honour.'

Balthier felt his second brow arch to join the first; a sly and humourless smile glided across his face, 'I am dying,' he began succinctly, 'If I live to see forty I shall do so in the body of a bedbound invalid too weak to move.'

_Allegedly – but then I have never given much credence to what others tell me. _

Balther eyed the arrogant young Solidor who dared to judge him, this boy who had coasted through existence by virtue of a moral sanctity others had shed blood to retain for him -including the addle-witted older brother driven mad by the pressures of being the least loved son. Balthier had always hated being judged by those never faced with his choices.

He stepped into Larsa Solidor's personal space with a snakelike smile scything over his lips. The smile said more than words that he had perpetrated despicable acts and betrayals in his day but was damned if he was going to be cowed by a man who had never had to do such things simply to escape greater evils.

_Bloody Solidors; it is high time Archadia had a change in ruling house._

'I spent my adult life trying to escape my father's legacy but it found me anyway. I made a deal with a creature I despise for stealing my father and my only home from me because I would have gladly sold my soul to see my wife and children again.'

_My father's crimes are not my fault; I'll be damned if I let them kill me – I have sins enough of my own for that. _

Something flickered over Larsa's tense drawn face, something like doubt, or perhaps a lightening quick consideration of what he would do if faced with never seeing Penelo and their as yet unborn baby again. Balthier nodded, not smiling anymore and too annoyed to care that Kry was listening intently to every word; in fact let the old reprobate listen it all helped his plan.

'I am here to rip these false gods from their pedestals once and for all and if I have to use you to do that so be it; I have nothing left to lose, Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, and no chance of winning. So fall on your damned sword if it pleases you, I could not care less.'

_I will defeat the Occuria once and for and then, by hook or by crook, I will convince my wife to forgive me (again – how many times will it be now?) and hopefully spend the rest of my days (of which there will be many – damn what the doctor says) in quiet peace. Perhaps I shall even grow fat in my dotage? _

Larsa looked as if he was about to speak, and Kry – eager minion that he was -hobbled forward to come up behind Balthier in reaction to such an overt declaration on his part of ill intent towards the Occuria. Balthier smiled in predatory fashion, sharp as a knife, and his hand lunged into Larsa's pocket to withdraw the Quidion of Mind.

Pivoting smoothly Balthier twisted around and slammed the face of the old, tarnished coin into the wrinkled and filthy brow of Professor Kry. Instantly the metal grew frigidly cold before heating to a fierce dry heat against Kry's skin as Balthier pushed the man back against the shiny milk white walls of the egg like chamber with one thumb holding the Quidion in place.

'Dear Professor Kry did no one ever tell you of the dangers of using someone else's magickal playthings? I don't appreciate having my memory erased. I don't appreciate someone using my weapons to trap me -or my wife.'

Kry was flat against the wall and his head was canted upward at uncomfortable angle as Balthier continued to push the coin into the old man's skin. An unpleasant scent of burning flesh rose from the coin along with a faint curl of smoke. Kry's eyes had rolled back into his head and his nose began to ooze sluggishly with blood. The old man's almost hidden mouth fell open limply and he began to drool into his filthy beard.

Larsa hurried up behind him and reached out to pry Balthier away from Kry who was beginning to twitch with the first of many mild convulsions.

'Balthier -what is the meaning of this?'

Ignoring Larsa Balthier focused his will upon Kry and the hot Quidion coin under his thumb.

'You want to follow a higher force, Professor Kry, you want to relinquish your will to another?…..Well then, allow me to step into the breach. I want you to summon Gerun, tell him that you have captured myself and Larsa. Tell him I am come by Venat's will. Tell him that I have a way he can achieve his every ambition.'

Balthier withdrew the Quidion, which had burned the pad of his thumb. He stepped back from the ancient, foul smelling sack of bones and sallow flesh fastidiously. Kry crumbled to the floor as Balthier pocketed the coin and spun on his heel to face a shocked Larsa Solidor.

He felt tired all of a sudden, a bone deep weariness that only owed a small debt to his physical frailty and everything to do with a heavy, tired soul. He wanted all this to be over. He wanted the scales set and balanced. He walked across the glaring white room with no discernable way out to slide down one of the glassy, faintly concave wall to drop his head between his drawn up knees.

He'd made so many mistakes -or rather he had never taken time to consider consequences – and now he couldn't avoid the fear that he was running out of rope to hang himself with.

Unseen, but felt by Balthier, Kry staggered up with the jerky movements of a marionette crumbling apart and uncomfortably jerked on taut strings. Placing one shaking liver spotted hand against the curved wall Kry opened a doorway, the glossy wall rippling and a perfect oval tunnel appearing in the centre of the wall.

Kry shuffled away to do his new master's bidding, the mark of the Quidion of Mind fading from visible view but still burning a hole right through the eroded free will of the old, sad man.

Balthier fished the Quidion (still warm to the touch) out of his pocket once more and rubbed his unburned thumb over the surface. He could feel Larsa's scrutiny but did not raise his head to meet that accusing regard.

'I would condemn you but there seems little point; it is punishment enough to know oneself as a monster, I should imagine.'

Balthier smiled snidely; _a monster? Hmm, don't mince words now, your lordship, please tell me what you really feel. _

Aloud he said, ignoring Larsa damning indictment, 'Oh, if you think that was something, wait until you see the finale.'

He flipped the coin so that it danced end over end to land with a clink at Larsa's feet. Larsa stepped away from the coin fastidiously (and just a little skittishly) and Balthier smiled up at him.

'Tell me your lordship, have you ever heard the story of the Quidion of Aspera?'

Larsa frowned, 'No,' he said shortly, 'I rather assumed that you merely made the whole Quidion matter up. There is no known myth surrounding these coins. In fact, I am not sure they are legitimate Quidion at all.'

Balthier chuckled lightly, _finally after all these years, someone works it out. _'Oh well, allow me to tell it to you then.'

Levering himself up Balthier pushed away from the wall and ran his hands over the lapels of his green suede jacket brushing out creases as he controlled the wheeze in his breathing.

'There once was, and in fact still is, a set of coins, thirteen Quidion and their duplicates; these coins were said to bring the wielder the use of strange arcane powers, not to be found on any magickers market stall.' He murmured warming to his narration -he had had much practice telling high tales to his daughter (Heios preferred facts to fiction which proved harder for Balthier to provide).

Larsa looked stony faced and unresponsive but he was still listening which was all Balthier required if truth be told.

'The Coin of Mind, for example allows the bearer to control the will of another; even if that other happens to be within the bearers mind at the time. Whoever takes ownership of a single coin commands the power therein.'

He circled Larsa and let his gaze flick down towards the Quidion of Mind; Larsa followed his eyes and his brows furrowed in burgeoning awareness. 'Whoever takes ownership of all the coins possesses the power of all, but more than that, the coins by the very nature of the magicks wrought upon them have the capacity to absorb other magicks – they are magnets of Mist.'

'Why do you tell me this, Balthier?' Larsa asked quietly looking up from his consideration of the Quidion of Mind. Balthier continued his leisurely circuit of the room. He shrugged with a lazy smirk.

'Larsa, you may have had a childhood deprived of actual childishness, but surely you are aware that all troves of great magick come with a caveat of doom; a curse or some such?'

Larsa did not react to the remark about his precociousness as a boy but instead studied Balthier thoughtfully, 'It isn't like you to be cryptic simply for the sake of it.'

Balthier chuckled, 'No; I thought I would take a leaf from our dear Marana's book. It is actually quite entertaining, all this cryptic nonsense.'

'Not from where I am standing it is not.' Larsa pointed out dryly. 'I already know you are a traitor to me, though there was never any great trust between us, but now I suspect you are in fact quite mad.'

Balthier repressed the bark of laughter that wanted to force its way up from his throat; but his smile was sharp and savage, 'For the gods own sake, Larsa, I have been quite mad for years; I am just adapt at feigning otherwise.'

The last several months had taught Balthier that sanity was a matter of perspective. He had always believed himself quite logical and justified in his actions but the general consensus seemed to believe otherwise. Eventually he had decided that it was simpler to capitulate than to stand against popular opinion -thus he had come to embrace his own 'eccentricities'. No wonder his father had relished his own 'madness'. It allowed one to get on with things without the inconvenience of explanation; after all no one expected the mad to have reasons for their madness.

When Larsa continued to just look at him as if the younger man expected him to manifest a gatling gun from his jacket pocket (to this day Balthier had no idea how his father managed such a feat) he sighed and flicked his wrist in irritation.

'Take up the bloody coin Larsa and when Gerun tries to take possession of your body the Magickal energies in the Coin will absorb the Occuria, leaving him trapped and thus making the leader of the Occuria your prisoner.'

Although very few people would ever believe that the astute, quick-witted, erudite Emperor of Archadia could ever be caught gaping with his mouth hanging open that was precisely what Larsa Solidor was doing now. Balthier, who should have been used to receiving that uncomprehending look of astonishment from friend and foe alike by now, still found it irritating.

Really the idea was elementary when one knew all the facts of the Quidion (which, as the commissioner of their creation, Balthier most certainly did) and he had rather suspected that Larsa, bright boy that he was, would grasp the fundamentals sooner than he had.

'This was your plan?' Larsa snapped his jaws together and glanced down at the coin at his feet, 'You manipulated events from the moment of your return solely to reach this point?'

Balthier folded his arms across his chest, 'No, actually, I only formulated the scheme a fortnight ago.' Peeved at what he perceived (incorrectly) as a smear on his deductive abilities Balthier felt his pride sting, 'coming back from the dead took longer to overcome than I had hoped.'

Larsa frowned and crouched by the coin, 'Twenty six coins altogether?' he asked musingly, finally catching onto the idea. Balthier settled himself into a sitting position once more; he grew tired so easily now.

'All quids in, yes.'

'We do not know the number of Occuria.' Larsa pointed out thoughtfully. He had yet to take up the coin but his fingers tapped against the shiny, glassy floor beside it meditatively.

'We don't need to,' Balthier argued persuasively, 'Gerun and the half dozen others Ashe saw in the throne room will be enough. Take them and we control the lot.'

'And Venat?' Larsa's bright, inquisitive lapis lazuli eyes snapped up to him. Balthier shrugged with as much indifference as he could muster.

'In a coin; I gave it to Ashe before we departed. She has either destroyed the damn thing by now or is in conference with Venat as we speak – it is of no real matter either way.' He shrugged.

He had told her not to be hasty in her assumptions but even Balthier had to admit he'd have a great deal of explaining to do when this was all over -possibly some grovelling as well – he may even have to sell more sheep or perform some act of great heroics (other than ridding Ivalice of the Occuria) in order to wriggle back into his queen's good graces.

'It does not matter to you if your wife knows you are not quite traitor, merely a liar?' Larsa queried with biting cynicism enough to impress even Balthier.

'No,' he conceded refusing to admit to his discomfort or the bare faced lie that slipped between his lips.

The truth was Ashe had forgiven him his various pathological faults one too many times already. He knew well that her patience and love far extended beyond reasonable doubt when it came to forgiving his trespasses against her; for the gods sake he'd all but died on her at least three times by his reckoning. Still, she had known his faults when she insisted on marrying him and he was, after all, more or less, doing all this for her benefit.

_I don't risk life and limb and rise from the dead (repeatedly) because I enjoy it, after all. It is all for her and the children...for the most part. _

Of course, somehow Balthier doubted that particular argument would carry much weight with Ashe.

Fishing inside the inner pocket of his suede jacket Balthier brushed his fingers against the cloth wrapped collection of coins Fran had retrieved for him from Hamish' care. As he did so Balthier murmured the old refrain -a mantra for a damned family - and the point of contention that tore a son from his father's side years ago.

'History in the hands of man.'

Larsa had been scrutinising him intently and now moved forward to crouch beside him as Balthier, seeing no point in hiding the secret cache any longer pulled the bound handkerchief from his pocket and poured the coins into his palms.

'So I was right,' Larsa breathed triumphantly, 'You did have the whole set all along? What was your plan Balthier, to use these coins to control your fellow pirates?'

_Not quite; merely insurance in case I _had _to control them lest they control me. _

He did not answer Larsa aloud because he had found that there was no audience that could understand the driving force that motivated his choices; no one who could reconcile his recent actions with his self professed lust for freedom and abhorrence of any and all means of controlling the choices of man. The only man who would have understood the dichotomy of controlling to break free of control was his father; because his father had taught him that way of life.

'History in the hands of man,' he repeated, the last retort, the last entreaty, in an unspoken argument with a man who had been dead and gone for almost a decade. 'Damnation is in the detail; it is not the principle at fault but the practice. After all, which man, if any, is fit to hold history in his hands alone?'

Larsa did not answer him, which was as well for Balthier did not want the interruption. His father's failure had come because he believed in his own superiority – his own infallibility. Cidolfus had believed that he and the Empire he served was worthy; Balthier had always known that somewhere in Ivalice there was someone better than him (not that he would openly admit this –but he still knew it to be true). That was why he could succeed where his father hadn't – because Balthier did not want to be perfect and he certainly did not want to be a god.

Balthier smiled down into the coins in his hands, forged in panic and paranoia years ago, which would now serve a very different purpose to that which the boy he had been could ever have conceived of.

He did not fear any god false or justified; he'd steal from death itself (and had done so – considering he still drew breath now). This sort of caper was easy; the real challenge would come after (should he survive).

Defeating the Occuria would be simplicity itself compared to the delicate act of repairing his marriage – assuming Ashe was even prepared (once again) to let him make reparations for the choices he had made and the course he had taken for the sake of a brighter tomorrow.


	41. Chapter 41

**Chapter Forty-One: Closing Acts……….**

The Naldoa Dancer was in flight once more, except that it was not the currents of air that the sleek craft sliced through, but the thick press of water. Like a shoal of sword fish the entire fleet of aquatic airship tore through the water, shearing up over the surface of the waves and plunging to the depths in powerful, lethal synchronicity.

Spiral pulses of Mist rippled through the sky above and vibrated through the thick, oppressive weight of the deep ocean; the battle had already been met, the combined might of the Ivalice Alliance faced off against the Occuria's ancient defences.

'Whoa – what are these things? I've never seen fiends like these before.'

Vaan spared a moment of concentration to remark as he steered the Naldoa Dancer at breakneck speed over sky and through the water. The airship was being buffeted by coruscating flares of Mist that would have torn apart and crushed an ordinary airship. The fey-light brilliance of exploding, volatile, Mist left scarring after-shocks across the retinas of each passenger in the craft.

'There is….much we do not know about the fiends….of the deep,' Basch tried to answer the initial question through gritted teeth as the craft rocked, rolled, and wheeled through the two disparate elements of air and water.

As he spoke one of the strange and fearsome denizens of the dark and hidden depths rose up out of the water; a leviathan of ancient myth, a long necked fiend of tremendous size, blind eyed and huge of maw. It tried to bite the Naldoa Dancer in half.

Vaan smoothly banked the ship out of the range of those savage, immense teeth, as other members of the fleet moved into engage this newest obstacle with Mist cannon and other modified weaponry freshly unleashed from Draklor's most closely guarded labs.

The entire ocean suppurated with the seething bodies of fiends and other creatures of the sky and ocean. Giant octopus tangled tentacles around strange fiends that defied description; eyeless monsters whose scaled flesh striated different colours like warning flares. Flying fiends dive-bombed through the air, riding currents of white hot Mist, to rip apart crazed seabirds with their beaks and talons while fish, burned by the Mist that roiled through the ocean, leapt from the boiling surf twisting and pirouetting in their death throes.

'The fiends matter not; we must breach the Pharos.'

Ashe said sharply from her own seat in the Dancer (any and all suggestion that she refrain from this mission had been met with cold, implacable anger). In her hand she clenched the Quidion of Betrayal; cold and dormant in her palm.

The Naldoa Dancer breached the sky once more and raced upwards towards rainbow stained and angry black clouds. The sky crackled with the violent energy rising like steam from the barrier surrounding the Pharos.

'Right; Pharos coming up,' Vaan declared with loud bravado as he set a course right through the crash of thunder and the strikes of lightning Mist. The shattered spire of the Pharos loomed larger upon the horizon as behind them the Arcadian airfleet's best and brightest swarmed the sky and the ocean both, keeping the Mist crazed fiends summoned to protect the approach to the Pharos at bay.

The horizon was lost in a swarm of incredible violence made flesh and steel reality. The sky bled red and black poison in showers of Mist corrupted rain and the ocean heaved with the corpses of creatures both ancient and maligned. The sounds of battle, the screech of cannonade, the howls of the surf and the screaming sky, created a wall of sound that formed its own palpable and threatening weight over the scene. The ocean began to turn red as the blood of multitudes ran free.

In the cabin of the Dancer silence reigned. Ashe clutched the coin of Venat in her bloodless hand and stared dead ahead. Somewhere else, in a place beyond the here and now, the hour glass of time and hope began to run down.

* * *

The inner sanctum and 'throne room' of the Occuria was not as Balthier remembered it. This was primarily because the first time he had set foot within this hallowed chamber, Ashe had been the only one of their party allowed a true audience with the stone faced Occuria. All in all Balthier was of the opinion that he had not missed all that much the first time around; the Occuria were not an impressive bunch.

He and Larsa had followed the Quidion possessed Kry to the inner sanctum and now stood in the stale, static air of the featureless chamber. Balthier flexed his spine trying to work out a kink. He could think of many places he would rather be right now than here in this draughty, silent crypt with a less than friendly Larsa while waiting (im)patiently for their hosts to acknowledge them.

Eventually the silence became too much and Balthier decided that even though silence was probably the wiser course he was tired of it.

'Hmm, perhaps you are not the catch I had thought you were, your lordship,' he murmured dryly shooting a sideways look Larsa's way, 'Gerun does not seem in any hurry to take possession of you.'

Larsa, who had been splitting his attention between the seemingly catatonic Kry, the unmoving statues of the Occuria, and Balthier himself now focused his considerable attention exclusively upon Balthier with undisguised distrust.

'Did you not factor this eventuality into your schemes, Balthier?' and the almost universally fair and even-handed Emperor's voice was almost, but not quite, snide.

Balthier smiled slyly, 'Oh, on the contrary, everything is progressing precisely as I had hoped.'

His smile widened as he ambled casually over to one of the statues arranged in a vaguely circular fashion around the edge of the chamber. 'Ashe and the others should have started their assault on the Pharos by now. No doubt that is distracting our illustrious hosts, hmm?'

He reached out and tapped his fingers against the pincer like hands of one calcified Occuria and grimaced as a strangely greasy dust flaked off against his fingers. 'Charming,' he muttered fastidiously wiping his hand on his trouser leg.

'And what are we to do while our allies wage war?' Larsa inquired acerbically, his hand hovering close to the hilt of Joyeux; the action a reflection of his deep animosity towards Balthier at present.

Balthier did not let his smile falter as he regarded the man, 'Why we wait Larsa; I would have thought that was obvious.'

'Wait for what?'

Balthier chuckled and the sound reverberated through the empty dead air of the Occuria throne room. He looked blindly around the throne chamber of these dead gods. The chill in his bones growing both more pronounced and less distracting; a strange sensation of weightlessness descended upon him as he considered the answer to Larsa's taut question.

'We wait for the end; I do not think we shall be waiting long.'

From one of his belt pouches Balthier pulled out a small sand filled hour glass and held it upright in his palm; he could do nothing to hide the constant tremor that ran down his arm to his hand. The sand in the hour glass had but a few grains left to fall and Balthier swiftly tipped it end over end to start the fall of time over again. The device was small, however, and the sand but a scant fimble full at most.

Larsa said nothing as he watched Balthier once again turn the hour glass head over end once more, an expression of vaguely frustrated concentration on his face, eyes intent upon the draining sand. Both men watched under the oppressive pall of Occuria silence as time continued to run out around them.

* * *

Ashe ran as fast and as ably as she could as the sea water splashed about her ankles. The lower levels of the Pharos were treacherous in the extreme, far more so than the upper reaches ever had been. An odious smelling thick slurry of fish guts and detritus from the ocean scudded the surface of the water that seeped in through cracks and fissures in the walls of the subterranean sections of the monolithic Pharos as she ran.

She had come to the Pharos, disregarding her duties as reigning monarch, because she had hoped to find some manner of truth both illuminating and profound that would explain and excuse all the lies, deceits, and double-dealing that had led to this moment and this crisis. All she had found however was decay, brine, and fish guts.

When her small party came to a halt beside more of the Mist fault control Crystals within the labyrinth of the Pharos interior, Ashe drew the Sword of Kings and faced outwards towards the corridors in case fiends or some other means of attack chose to attempt an ambush while they were distracted with their sabotage. None had been forthcoming so far, but rather than feeling reassured by this Ashe was simply more convinced that something truly terrifying was waiting in the wings.

Behind her back a collection of silently efficient Moogles, Nono among them, finished placement of one of the primed Crystal shards they had rigged up to permanently disrupt the Occuria's control of the Mist Faults. Once they had finished and without a word spoken Ashe, Vaan, and Basch moved off with the Moogles towards the next designated Crystal.

The Quidion, pressed into her palm, grew increasingly cold as she moved deeper into the Pharos; the chill throbbing through her palm and making the bones in her hand ache.

_Highness you know what needs to be done. Arise Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca, and finish what Raithwall started. _

Ashe stopped dead in one wet, dripping dark and water stained passageway deep under the surface of the ocean as the words slithered through her mind. Her breath caught in her throat as a shuddering shiver ran through her body from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes.

The voice she heard was both dear and paradoxically obscene to her: the voice of her husband, the one she had chosen and fought for, the father of her children. A voice maligned by the cold of the Undying and the stain of Mist. She ignored the voice even as she held onto the coin even more tightly; refusing to heed the voice and what she knew it wanted.

* * *

Balthier closed his eyes as he sat, knees drawn up and his back pressed against the vaguely hume-like statue of one of the seated Occuria. He did not feel cold so much as hollow through and through.

He tapped his fingers against the smooth curves of the hour glass which he held in his palms. He had never enjoyed waiting, always impatient in regards almost all things, but now he found himself relishing the inactivity and appreciating the moment. This was not because he enjoyed sitting in complete (and somewhat hostile) silence waiting for a would-be-god to return home, but instead because he knew that time was not on his side any longer.

Careful to make sure that no movement of his would spark the already simmering suspicions of the Emperor Balthier flexed the fingers of his left hand, keeping the gesture hidden by his drawn up legs. Hmm, yes indeed, it was not merely his imagination. The flesh of the back of his left hand was so deftly pale as to be genuinely translucent.

Balthier smiled faintly, the expression too tired to be called either sardonic or caustic. How delightfully ironic, he thought to himself as he pressed the stricken limb closer to his body as if to deny the truth, it looked like he'd be bowing out of this life in the same fashion as his father. It was almost enough to make him laugh aloud except of course that it was not remotely entertaining.

'I wish that I knew at least the fate of those who breach the Pharos.' Larsa snapped out as he continued to pace back and forth across the circular dais of the chamber, under the empty stone eyes of the Occuria. 'I wish to the gods I could be with them now.'

Balthier smiled, almost gently, 'Don't worry your Lordship I already know who is slated to die this day, and it is not any in the Pharos.'

* * *

The flares of Pyroclasm ruptured the air in a flower petal display of pyrotechnics that did nothing to hinder the advance of the Occuria's thunderous approach. Ashe readied her sword and stood her ground as Vaan fell back, momentarily exhausted, and Basch came up to stand beside her.

'I am Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca,' Ashe raised her voice as she regarded the tyrannical being that loomed towards her, resembling nothing so much as a great Wyrm of old myth, serpentine and resplendent in shades of fire and shadow scale. 'Speak fiend if you can.'

Huge eyes, framed in a fan of tawny feathers regarded her from a face that appeared more bird-like than reptilian. The fantastical fiend that had risen from the Mist just as Ashe and her party had approached the final Fault Crystal looked upon her with undisguised hatred.

'False queen: betrayer of the pact, betrayer of the covenant. Humes shall pay for their treachery.' Gerun's voice, spindly and wheedling even issuing from the throat of such a majestic beast, did not surprise Ashe all that much. Instead she bared her teeth in a savage grin, mind enflamed with the sudden prospect of revenge.

'I made no pact with thee, Gerun, or any Occuria. If there is treachery afoot it is of your doing not ours. Today I will see the last of the shackles you placed upon Ivalice severed and your reign of tyranny sundered once and for all.'

Almost before she had finished speaking a swiping forepaw was bearing down upon her. The limb was the size of a goodly sized man and thicker than the trunks of the ancient trees of Golmore (as it once was). Ashe rolled neatly out from under it and across the soiled floor as Gerun's claws ripped up the stone work.

Basch was there to scoop her up and help her to her feet and they came together with Vaan to face the Occuria in his true form.

'We must not let him distract the Moogles from their labours.' Ashe hissed urgently as Vaan took to taunting the hulking form of the Occuria as a distraction. Basch nodded and handed her an odd piece ore. It was a faint greenish colour and no larger than her palm.

'A token of esteem from Draklor,' Basch explained shortly as he braced his great two sided war axe against his shoulder, ready to move in for the attack. It was only then that Ashe realised he had other pieces of the oddly familiar ore about his person, strung across his belt like peculiar grenades.

Basch noticed her scrutiny and smiled faintly, 'It is magicite treated with anti-Mist agent; if the Occuria are truly creatures of the Mist these rocks should prove most useful.'

'Indeed.' Ashe murmured casting a quick Shell spell over Vaan as he leapt out of the way of a jet of blue black flame emitted from between the Wyrm-Gerun's lips. 'Let us test that theory.'

Running forward before Basch could stop her Ashe threw the rock towards the gaping maw of the wyrm beast just as the almost pretty feathered head turned towards her, mouth open on a roar.

The piece of rock was so small that Gerun did not even notice as he swallowed it. Instead his huge head bore down intent on swallowing the scion of the Dynast line whole. Ashe waited until the last moment to dive out of the way of that lunge and then sprang to her feet as the head reared back up. She swung with her blade but missed the creature's snout. A powerful exhalation of air from one of the wyrm's nostrils blasted her off her feet and she fell.

Vaan and Basch moved in with spells and blades. Ashe struggled to her feet and slammed the blade of the Sword of Kings into the flesh of the Wyrm's forepaw, driving downwards upon the blade with all her strength until the tip of the sword struck the stone floor.

Gerun tore his forepaw off the ground taking the sword with him and knocking Ashe aside once more; a snarl of almost hume-like pain rattled her teeth and rocked the walls of the Pharos. Basch leapt forward as Gerun staggered in ungainly fashion and struck a blow with his axe to the side of the wyrm's sinuous neck. Instead of blood the Occuria bled Mist; rainbow hued and translucent on the air, accompanied by the stench of burning metal.

Nimble as any street thief still operating in the streets of Rabanastre today Vaan dived forward and forced a piece of the anti-Mist treated magicite into the wound Basch had caused. Gerun screamed again and the three humes moved forward for the kill, blades spinning through the air.


	42. Chapter 42

**Chapter Forty-Two:……And The Final Curtain Call.**

The first indication Balthier and Larsa had that something was finally happening came when the statues of the Occuria began to crack and crumble around them. Balthier leapt to his feet before he could be brained by the falling head of the statue he had been leaning against.

'Well, this could be interesting.' He murmured dryly as Larsa pulled free Joyeux. Almost in counterpoint to the thuds of falling masonry and the sweet song of the blade of joyeux coming free of its sheath, Professor Kry began to scream. The old man dropped to his knees with his hands clutching at the sides of his head.

Curious Balthier approached for a closer inspection as the old wraith began to convulse upon the ground. He crouched down beside Kry and rolled him over onto his back with one hand to his shoulder.

The old man's mouth was opening and closing like a fish out of water, gasping wetly as blood, foul smelling and rancid, spilled over his jaw and ran into his filthy, tangled beard.

'……all dead……they are all gone….too much energy to control the faults….Gerun, my master…..screaming….'

Claw like gnarled fingers clutched at Balthier without any strength before falling away like lifeless twigs. Balthier pursed his lips as he lowered Kry's corpse to the ground. He deftly closed the man's old and sunken yellowed eyes with fingers growing increasingly numb.

'Is he dead?' Larsa demanded coming forward.

'Decidedly, and none deserved it more.'

Rising to his feet Balthier wiped off his hands across his vest fastidiously. He looked around him at the devastated ruin of the Occuria statues.

'I had wondered about the other Occuria, so silent and meek.' He admitted almost dreamily, 'It is the time worn question of what happens to a god when the acolytes no longer believe, I suppose.' He shrugged and shook his head, 'This makes our bargaining position considerably stronger, in any regard.'

He turned to meet Larsa's bright and accusing eyes, 'What bargaining position would that be, Balthier?' the other man grabbed his arm and Balthier pulled free before the young lord could ascertain that something was quite wrong indeed with Balthier.

Thankfully they had no opportunity for further discussion between themselves however as at that moment the statue of Gerun erupted in a shower of stone and plaster to rain through the air. A gaseous form began to coalesce from Mist before their eyes.

Balthier stepped forward, smiling. 'Ah finally, I was beginning to question your hospitality Gerun; it is a poor show indeed to keep your guests waiting so long.'

The Mist quivering form of the beleaguered and last of the Occuria seemed to focus with eyeless intensity upon Balthier.

'You! Spawn of Cid, the heretic's toy, you have done this. Foul hume, thou have destroyed us.'

Balthier shrugged cheerfully in response to the almost whining tone. 'Well I cannot take all the credit,' he smiled, 'Still you should be more polite, Gerun, for it is I who offer you salvation.'

'Salvation? No, humes are no saviours; foul and vicious gods all humes be. It was your bloodlust and thirst for power from which we Occuria sprang. Humes tainted the Mist with your greed and your filthy passion; made us want, made us need, but denied us flesh, denied us outlet. Your shadows we have always been when we, Occuria, are greater than mere humes could ever be.'

'Oh please, you can barely keep your wisps together.' Balthier scoffed imperiously, 'You wanted a taste of power for yourselves but had not the means to acquire it. You are inferior in everyway.'

'No! Trapped and damned we are by the gods with feet of clay. Our fathers deny us, our mothers know us not. We are what humes made of us.'

As Balthier advanced on the shifting plume of dwindling Mist, Gerun seemed to pull in on itself, flickering in shimmering colours not seen in nature. Larsa, watching all with sharp eyed interest and concern, was surprised to find himself moved to something approaching pity as he watched the rapidly dissipating form of Gerun.

'You wicked humes, you made us and then denied us. We are but shadows; bloodless and trapped eternally to watch what we cannot have while you humes squander all you touch.'

Gerun's form flickered with indignation but quavered in obvious fear as Balthier reached the edge of the dais and casually flopped down onto Gerun's dust and debris strewn throne with nonchalant disinterest. He brushed away the shattered shell of Gerun's calcified physical form with thoughtless cruelty.

'You know, Gerun, this whining is unbecoming in a would-be deity. You sound far too….needy.' Balthier purred as he pulled free the pouch of Quidions in his possession and held one coin pursed between thumb and forefinger. 'Still I am feeling magnanimous and therefore offer you the opportunity to save yourself before my wife destroys your Mist faults completely.'

Larsa frowned, confused. He had thought that Balthier would tempt Gerun into trying to possess him, but now he was not sure that the pirate had ever intended such despite his words to the contrary. There was something in the older man's manner that suggested that Larsa's purpose for being here was not as bait, but instead as witness.

'Balthier what manner of game do you play?' Larsa asked carefully as Gerun hovered, fading at the edges but burning bright at the core with a very hume and very mortal longing to survive. He suspected that all this was yet again another of the pirate's games within games and bluff within bluff.

The wily sky pirate turned briefly towards Larsa and he looked as though he had aged ten years. The cares of a life time were etched upon his brow and stark in his unsmiling face. Larsa found himself genuinely taken aback as his suspicion and fear rocketed to new extremes.

'All mortals are ruthless; we have little time for ought else.' Balthier said softly not really addressing himself to either Larsa or Gerun. 'It is the true mark of mortality; the voracious, selfish hunger to survive.' A strange smile quirked his lips, 'Glad I am to be free of the hunger, and thus freed, I am able to offer you a chance Gerun. If I were you I would take it.'

'What chance?' the last of the Occuria asked and even in the asking conceded the battle; to survive was all and everything.

Balthier chuckled, 'You will be familiar with it; you once condemned the Espers to such a fate. I offer you the only punishment and salvation fitting of one such as you: to be bound and beholden to man ever more.' He flipped the coin into the air and caught it deftly.

'A slave; you would make of me a slave to humes?' Gerun sneered, in so much as a non corporeal being could be seen to sneer without lips.

'Are you not that already?' Balthier demurred with falsely innocent query, 'Did you not say that you longed to walk Ivalice as flesh and blood – to walk in the shoes of the gods of clay?'

Larsa watched Gerun's form shudder and twist in the air like a disturbed candle flame in the dark.

'This coin would allow that?' The voice shivered and then hardened with suspicion, 'No you are deceitful. Trust not I, the son of Cid.'

'Oh, it's not me that will make this deal with you,' Balthier waved away the suspicion, 'it is the Emperor over there who will grant your greatest wish. I will be long past caring by that point.' He added airily.

Larsa blinked in surprise, questions leaping to his lips, only to be contained as he took an involuntary step back when the Occuria drifted towards him. Larsa was not afraid of the creature as such but instead quelled in the face of the dreadful light of desperation and hope flicking through the gaseous form.

Truly, Balthier was right, Larsa thought, survival was a vicious addiction; it had even made slaves of the very gods themselves.

* * *

'No.' Ashe's hand clenched almost convulsively around the Quidion in her hand. She backed away from the final Crystal almost unconsciously. 'No there must be some other way.'

'No kupo, no other way.' Nono's liquid dark eyes looked up at her from a downy white furred face. The Moogle's eyes seemed to express a world of pain and mournful resolve.

Ashe looked to the solemn fluffy faces of the other Moogles and then to Basch and Vaan, battered and bloody from the fight with Gerun.

'What's going on?' Vaan asked worriedly. Ashe opened her palm to stare into the face of the Quidion of Betrayal; she had clenched the coin so tightly that it had cut into the flesh of her palm.

'No I will not do this.'

'Do what?' Vaan asked as the Moogles continued to watch her with their sorrowful eyes.

'Highness, what is the matter?' Basch asked her subconsciously tightening his grip on his war hammer. Ashe opened her mouth to answer but another voice one that whispered up from the cold and tarnished metal in her hand, interrupted her before she could draw breath.

_How now Highness, it is not like you to shy away from your duty; it is time to end the Occuria's reign once and for all. Give up the coin, Princess, Nono will do the rest. _

'Balthier – no, I will not.' Ashe spoke out loud squeezing her eyes closed on the confused faces of Basch and Vaan.

In her minds eye she found herself sitting in Balthier's tower room by the cold and dead fireplace facing the visage of her husband. He looked as she always chose to imagine him; the very image of a dapper young sky pirate in embroidered vest and too tight trousers. He stood before exactly as he had the first time she had ever laid eyes on him. He leaned against the open window and smiled slightly.

'It's time to let go Ashe. This is the final curtain and the last farewell.'

'No.'

'Yes.' He shot back; calm and unmoved.

Ashe clenched her fists, standing in the cold bedroom high in a grey and luminous sky. It seemed to her that this tower suspended in a still and listless sky was the only structure left in existence and they, the only two left alive. She shuddered afraid of the thought.

'Where are we?'

'Nowhere; we simply are. This place is the empty side of the hour glass when all the sand has run away. As I said, this is the moment of farewell.'

Balthier moved across the room towards her and grasped her shoulders. It was only then that she realised that she wore the same clothes she had worn during her quest to liberate Dalmasca. For just a handful of heartbeats she saw the tunnel of time; running back and running forward. She stood at its centre facing back through her years with him. She did not want to look forward in time as she was afraid that he would no longer be there with her.

She looked up at him then; fearful and angry. He stroked her face with deft fingers, brushing her lips lightly with the pad of his thumb; the same, faint and strangely humorous smile touching his lips.

'Yes.' He whispered dryly and confirmed her unspoken fears with brutal simplicity, 'My time is up.'

Shaking her head she willed the tears away and drew a scolding breath. 'I won't let you go again. Damn you Balthier, I only just found you.'

He reached out a finger to brush across the frown line between her eyebrows, 'I am already gone Princess, don't ruin our last moment by pouting.' He pressed a chaste kiss to her brow. She could smell tears upon the air.

'I don't believe you,' she snapped jerking away from him and turning her back. She could hear the roaring passage of time; a hurricane of life and sensation that did not move for him any longer. 'I do not believe in this….this vision. You are nothing more than a deception of Venat.'

He chuckled behind her back and stepped up close behind her. His arms locked around her waist from behind tightly. His breath tickled her neck as he purred into her ear.

'Be that as it may; I shall not deny it nor confirm. All I shall say is that it does not matter. Things are as they are and what must be done must be done. You have never shied away from necessary action before.'

Almost convulsively she gripped his forearms her nails digging into the soft, fine cotton of his sleeves. 'What will happen to you?'

'Nothing,' he sighed against her skin and the sound rasped against her like raw grey silk, 'I am not real; I am merely a facet in time now, a piece of the fabric of your past. What more can happen to someone who has already ceased to be, after all?'

'You promised you would not die on me.' She sobbed; she could barely hold herself upright and only his arms around her kept her from falling to the ground.

'I know,' he said and she thought she heard grief in his own voice, but the whistle of the winds of time buffeting the outer walls of the tower was too loud and distracting for her to be sure. 'I think we both knew I was lying.' He whispered; raw silk and frayed satin rubbing against the open wounds weeping from her heart and soul.

Ashe bit down painfully on her bottom lip. 'Damn you pirate.'

'Already done Princess; I was damned long before we met.'

Appearing as if by magick, or the cruel manipulations of the mind, the Quidion of Betrayal filled her palm as she held it open before her; Balthier brushed his cheek against hers as they both regarded the coin.

'This will destroy the Mist faults?' she asked timidly already most afraid she knew the answer.

'It is the catalyst; it contains the essence of Venat. Venat longs only to die, to break the curse of the Undying.'

Ashe tried to turn to face him, as her heart clenched in sickening understanding. His arms around her would not let her turn back but instead forced her to face a future that did not involve him. 'But you are bound too tightly to Venat….if she dies….'

'Venat's sacrifice will set all Ivalice free.' Balthier's kiss brushed her hair at the crown of her head, 'Much as your own sacrifice will.'

'My sacrifice?' she could barely find breath to speak. She thought this pain was behind her. She had prayed never to taste such grief again; it was like sour milk and ashes upon her tongue.

'Yes, history enjoys repetition,' Balthier's voice caressed her. It was the feel of velvet wrapped skeletal fingers down her spine; the voice of the dead. 'You lost a husband once, now you must do away with another. It is the only way to end the threat of the Mist faults once and for all.'

'Why?' Ashe twisted in his arms wishing she could fling the Quidion out of the window and away. She slammed her open palms against his chest, feeling supple leather and body heat against her skin; an illusion more real than reality itself. 'Why must I make this sacrifice; why must _you_?'

Balthier laughed, bright and faintly mocking, 'Oh, Princess, you should know the answer by now. You are called upon to make sacrifice because you are prepared to do so. It is the bane of the selfless. I, on the other hand, have simply run out of rope and now must swing.'

He pulled away and she reached to clasp his hand trying to hold him to her. 'Do not leave me again.' It was a tear soaked command and one she knew he would not obey.

He smiled sadly, almost sweetly, stepping forward and tilting her chin up with one hand. His lips upon hers were soft and gentle and his mouth warm and sweet. She clung to him as if she could turn back the hands of time and start from the beginning all over again.

'Please no, I do not want you to die.' She whispered against his lips as she felt him begin to leave her.

'Highness, I am already dead.' He whispered, already a ghost in her ear and no more than that. At the last moment before she left this place of bittersweet remembrance she felt skin warmed metal being placed upon her finger. The ring of pink and blue was too large for her.

'A memento of our time together,' he smiled into her sorrow already fading into the past, 'hold on to it for me, would you?'

Ashe could only watch then as he turned his back on her and walked through the insubstantial walls of the tower to become one with the thick, dull grey glow of the sky. She lost him to sight once and for all as the flow of time caught upon her and she tumbled back along the tunnel into the present.

* * *

When Ashe opened her eyes once more she was back in the Pharos; tears of grief and rage upon her cheeks and the Quidion of Betrayal in her hand. She could still feel the phantom warmth of a blue and pink ring upon her finger but when she looked there was nothing there.

'Ashe – hey Ashe, are you alright?' Vaan peered at her as she came fully back to her senses to find that she was leaning into Basch, crying into his shoulder. She turned her eyes towards the silently waiting and already mourning Moogles and the crystal awaiting it's detonator without answering him.

Her hand shook violently as she handed the Quidion over to Nono. 'Do what must be done, but gods damn you just do it quick.'

She hissed choking on a rage and hurt that exceeded her grief for the moment, before turning away and beginning to run as fast as she could towards the place where the Naldoa Dancer was docked.

It was like the Bahamut all over again except this death would be eternal.

* * *

Larsa almost reverently wrapped the Quidion of Mind up in his black cotton handkerchief, making sure that it was securely encapsulated in cloth. He had not dared touch the coin since Gerun had allowed himself to be drawn into it. Settling the Quidion into the pouch with the others that Balthier had given him Larsa looked over to the other man.

Balthier was standing quietly beside the Waystone that would take them out of this chamber but he was not making any attempt to activate it. Instead he stood looking at his hands, turning them palm up and then palm down as if he had never seen them before.

It was only when Balthier began to work the pink and blue ring off his marriage finger that Larsa recognised what he was truly seeing. As Balthier rather clumsily and hastily placed the ring on the lip of the waystone plinth Larsa realised that he could see the cold stone of the plinth through the other man's hands.

'Gods above and below; what is happening?'

Instinctively Larsa moved forward towards Balthier but the older man did not seem to notice. Instead he continued to watch his own hands as they began to fade away; separating into pale, pearlescent components before both their eyes. An odd smile played upon Balthier's pale face as he moved from the waystone and towards the edge of the central platform they stood upon.

'Balthier?'

Larsa had never been fool enough to deny fear. He had known many occasions of terror and helpless fright. The moment he had drawn blade against his brother Vayne aboard the Bahamut was one such occasion and he had been almost maddened with excitement and fear upon the morn of his wedding day. This however was different.

What Larsa experienced now, watching Balthier stand before him, eyes closed and an expression of oddly accepting resignation upon his face, was a sense of awed dread.

He had felt something similar when the Bahamut had crashed into the desert sands of Dalmasca; it was a feeling of finality and relief that an end had finally come but also an almost distant form of regret that something so vital and important had come to such an end. That was what Larsa felt in this moment, knowing that he was watching the man once named Ffamran Mid Bunansa die.

'It is over now,' Balthier's voice was more phantom than reality, 'It is time to fly away from this place. I can hear the sky calling me.'

Before Larsa's eyes Balthier raised his arms slightly out from his body and tilted his head back as if basking in some unseen light. For just a moment Larsa thought he saw the ghost of the old sly smile, bright and unrepentant, appear despite the tracks of tears that seemed to glow across his shimmering cheeks. Still it would be the swirls and eddies of Mist and fey-light that Larsa would remember ever more. Watching a man drift into infinity in tiny motes of light and air was a sight the Emperor of Archadia would take to his grave.

Larsa watched and Balthier faded; there were no last words, no apologies, just a time weary smile that faded last of all.

In the end, against all expectations to the contrary, the greatest of all the sky pirates, the infamous Balthier, did not die with a bang or a whimper, but instead went silent and peaceful as a little lamb into legend. He did not leave so much as a scrap of white shirt or a flash of jewellery to mark his passing.

All that remained of the man was the ring that he had removed from his finger before the end.

Larsa stared at the place where Balthier had last stood for a very long time; the bag of Quidion in his hand almost forgotten. For the longest time the Emperor of Archadia did not move and did not stir as the dead and abandoned chamber of the Occuria grew progressively colder around him.

When Larsa Ferrinas Solidor finally bestirred himself to move he walked not to the waystone but instead, in something of a stupor, he moved to the edge of the dais and looked over the black chasm beyond.

Larsa Solidor, renowned as a man of courage, conviction, and above all integrity smiled, just slightly, blue eyes numbed by all he had seen and strangely hardened. He held the bag of Quidion over the edge and then, without ceremony, he let the bag drop into the sea of formless darkness over the edge of the dais.

He had not reneged on his word; it was conceivable that one day a mortal would find the bag, a cursed treasure trove of unknown providence, and Gerun would have his dearest wish. That was merely chance and circumstance and Larsa would not play god with fate…….still he was not about to hand the last of the Occuria, humekinds greatest foe, all he wanted on a silver platter either. Gerun would have to take his own chances.

Turning away from the precipice Larsa fancied he could hear Balthier's voice on the stale air, commending him on his duplicity; oddly the thought did not bother Larsa all that much.

Returning to the waystone Larsa took up the pink and blue ring between his thumb and forefinger. It had begun to cool against the harsh stone of the waystone so that it seemed as though it had never been worn; never known the heat of hume flesh and blood. Larsa looked down upon the ring and did not relish the thought of presenting it to Queen Ashe.

Just before he activated the waystone the Emperor turned back to the empty chamber just once more; still and untouched by all that had transpired within the chamber was as dead as it had always been. Larsa cast his eyes over the derelict and filthy corpse of professor Kry and the tumble down statues and crumbled ruin of the Occuria fallen. He looked for a long time; he did not know why but he felt it necessary to absorb all he could, if only to ensure that Archadia would never become a mausoleum of decay as Giruvegan now was.

Eventually and inevitably, the Emperor's eyes gravitated once more to where the son of Doctor Cid had gone to meet his father somewhere far beyond this place and time. Father and son would have much to talk on. Larsa smiled faintly as he touched the waystone to take him from this place; it was over.

So many things were over now; annuls of time were closing and tomorrow would not be the same as yesterday. Larsa knew that a reckoning had occurred this day. All debts real and imagined had been paid and now finally the curtain had fallen on more than just the Occuria. The leading man had died and with him a time and place that would never be again.

There would be sadness and mourning; the absence of such a man as Balthier would be felt in many hearts and all points of the compass. Yet where one leading man retired from the stage there would be another to take his place. It was the way of things; tomorrow would come with the dawn, no matter how dark the night.

The waystone lit with eldritch white brilliance and Larsa vanished from the Occuria crypt. He materialised before Giruvegan's Gigas Gate facing the still and placid waters of the drowned city just as the Naldoa Dancer touched down. Larsa started towards the friends and allies who disembarked from the airship with head held high.

Under the pall of Ashe's hollow eyed silence he placed the pink and blue ring into her waiting palm. No words were spoken as a dove, white as a dream, ghosted across the Mist cleared and faultless blue sky above their heads.

The story was over but the legend, yes, the legend would linger.

_Finis_

* * *

_February 2009. _

_Spikey44_

_Sometimes the author does not match the ambition. I wrote a good story and tried to finish it well, but once upon a time, ah well, this could have been a __great__ story. Then I went and made it too big and couldn't do it justice. I apologise for that; it is an occupational hazard of trying to write a legend, I suppose. _


	43. Chapter 43

_A/N: This story was officially finished in February 2009, but I have never been satisfied with how I finished it off; in truth I was disappointed with myself. Some reviewers asked at the time for an epilogue to wrap up some loose plot threads and I have finally found the where-with-all to write one. It doesn't resolve everything but it covers a lot of what I didn't have the fortitude to write before. _

_At least I now feel satisfied that I have wrapped up the Conversations series as it should have been before; For this whole chapter I must thank Zaz9-Zaa0, whose advice ensured this epilogue was written. _

_Spikey44: 25__th__ August 2009_

**My Father, My Ghost**

His Highness Prince of Nabradia, Heios Demen Dalmasca, arose on his sixteenth birthday with a certain sense of trepidation and excitement. Today, according to Dalmascan custom he was a man (although according to the Archadian custom of his father's blood he was one already at fifteen). Today, at least, he was ready to take a first step into adulthood.

First however he must face the ghost in the mirror.

Disentangling himself from his bed sheets, narrowly avoiding dripping on fallen trails of loose linen bedding, Heios crossed his bed chamber in the royal palace Rabanastre and faced the full standing dressing mirror in the corner of his room.

Though he took pains to conceal it, Heios did not lack for vanity and he could not pretend to be displeased with the young man he saw standing in the mirror glass. Already taller than most men in his mother's service many decades his senior, Heios had the rangy height and leanness of a long distance runner. People often complimented him on the grace of his carriage, the perfect levelness of his shoulders and his straight back as he walked or sat in repose. The carriage of a king, the sycophants would tell him.

His mother would smile slightly and say 'oh no, he has the pride of a pirate, that is what keeps his back so straight.'

Mother meant it as a compliment, Heios knew this. He knew that the softness that would come across her eyes, a heavy tincture of nostalgia and loss, was not disappointment in him, but instead his mother's reaction to the ghost who stood at Heios' perfectly straight back.

His father, his ghost: the _pirate_.

Heios watched as his reflections brows dipped. He critically examined his own almost cruelly precise high arched and mobile brows that often gave Heios the keen look of a bird of prey. The scowl on his face made him look both petulant and forbidding and it was probably just as well that Prince Heios Demen had little cause to frown that often in his life.

Still staring into the mirror it was not Heios that he saw, but instead the ghost of a man long dead and gone.

Heios murmured softly, 'I am not you.'

As always he felt a stab of guilt to speak so. His father was almost twelve years dead and the name Balthier was almost never spoken in the royal household. From time to time Captain Vaan or his lady mother the Queen herself, might make veiled reference to "the pirate" but only rarely, and never was his father called by his name.

Heios himself has no reliable memory of his father, but his mind is filled with disparate facts about "_the pirate_". Thus when Heios looked into a mirror and saw the imprint of a dead man's face staring back at him, he could be forgiven for feeling almost haunted.

'Mother has never forgiven you, do you know that?' Heios asked the ghost in the mirror as he moved to his armoire and pulled from it a soft finely woven white shirt. 'She has never forgiven you for breaking your promise and dying.'

Heios is not supposed to know about that promise. He and his sister the princess Halina, are not supposed to know that it was years before their mother could even summon a wane smile for their father's memory. The 'pirate' may be relegated now to no more than vague allusions and whispers in the royal household, but in the beginning he was spoken of not at all. The pirate Balthier did not simply die; he was erased from the very fabric of Heios and Hallie's early lives by those around them.

The Queen his mother and her Knight Captain Vaan, and all those other people who had once called themselves Balthier's friends and allies, had closed ranks around the fatherless twins and stolen even the chance of mourning their father from Heios and Halina. Heios supposes they thought at the time that they were doing right, but Heios has never truly believed that they were right to steal even grief from he and his sister.

Hallie, very much her mother's daughter, has almost cheerfully accepted the common attitude that her father was less than a shadow; that she never had a father to speak of to begin with. She doesn't remember their father at all. Heios suspects strongly that she does not even try to. He has heard her say of their father's ghost:

'Good riddance, he caused our lady mother enough heartache. The Pirate was a great aid to Dalmasca's glory but he did not serve his family well.'

Hallie is very disdainful of pirates; it is great sport with her to be so. Heios however never speaks a word about his father, "the pirate", either to defend or condemn him. He swallows down the questions that plague him daily as, with every day, he becomes more and more his father's shadow.

Heios doesn't ask: 'Mother why did you risk your throne and reputation to marry a man many say was reckless and ungovernable, with a will to mind no one save himself?'

He does not ask: 'If my father was so much the scoundrel how is it he gave his life to free Ivalice once and for all from the clutches of the Occuria?'

He does not argue with Hallie when she speaks ill of a man she never had the chance to know. He does not say to her: 'You are just repeating the gossip of the streets; our father loved us – he must have loved us: he died for our freedom.'

To the ghost in the mirror Heios says, 'You are a legend from Ambervale to Archades and Bhujerba to Bur-Omisace, but your own children do not remember you. Tell me father, are you at peace, or does it hurt you to know you are a dark shadow over the perfect harmony of your children's lives?'

* * *

**In Search of Ghosts in All the Wrong Places**

Heios had first started searching for his father, his ghost, when he was nine. Dark haired and tall, Heios always felt somewhat the odd one out in his family. His sister, although tall for a Dalmascan girl, has always had their mother's face and colouring, though her eyes are sorrel dark. Heios, in contrast, has always been a slender cool faced shadow against their light. He is his father's memory come to haunt every portrait he is in.

It was only natural therefore that Heios should be unable to leave alone the mystery of his absent father, a man who was as a stranger to him; an enigma and a phantom both frightening and fascinating.

'Captain was my father a kind man?'

He had asked as a little boy running after Captain Vaan as he trudged across the combat practice yard of the royal barracks. Captain Vaan had been more father to him than any other man and his own sons are like little brothers to Heios and Halina both. He remembers the expression on the captain's usually smiling face. It seemed to take Captain Vaan too long to answer, and that in itself was answer enough.

'He was a _good_ man.' The Captain had said finally as if he had had to discard all manner of other answers.

Heios had shaken his head, quick mind flying along as fast as the gulls circling in the blue sky beyond Rabanastre's paling.

'But a man can be good in principle and cruel in person. He can be moral but ungenerous, principled but unfriendly.' Heios remembers clasping the Captain's sleeve in quiet desperation, 'You knew my father well Captain, what manner of man was he?'

He remembers that Vaan's face had fallen, the smiling lines sun etched into his broad and open features falling into unnaturally solemn lines. Vaan's clear blue eyes had looked down into Heios' dark ones and he had clapped one gauntleted hand onto Heios's shoulder and squeezed.

'Balthier was just Balthier. He wasn't like any other man.' Vaan had seemed suddenly intent and he had squeezed Heios' shoulder again, 'Don't listen to what people say: your father wasn't what they say he was.'

Your father wasn't what they say he was? Heios had puzzled over that for days and eventually he had approached his mother, after his lessons were completed for the day and mother had just finished with her chancellor Sir Migelo.

'Mother, was the pirate Balthier not my father?' he had asked.

The eventual conclusion he had drawn from Captain Vaan's words was that, despite the generally accepted view, his father could not have been the pirate Balthier. He must have been someone else because people said that the pirate Balthier was his father and the Captain had told him not to listen to what the people said.

He remembered that his mother had stared at him in shock, 'Of course your father was Balthier,' she had said. 'What makes you ask such a question?'

Heios had told his mother what Vaan had said and he had asked her the same question as before: 'Mother what manner of man was my father?'

He remembered that his mother had sat back in her throne and patted her lap and Heios, although he was a big boy of nine then, had nevertheless crawled into his mother's lap and settled his head against her shoulder. His mother had been quiet for a little while, looking beyond the far reaches of the royal chambers to somewhere else.

'He was the leading man,' she had said finally with a sad little laugh and shake of her head, 'He was proud as an emperor, sulky as a little child, vain as a peacock, and more arrogant than a brace of Margrace brothers.'

Heios had lifted his head to look at his mother in puzzlement. These did not seem like sterling qualities to him, but his mother had been smiling.

'He,' she paused as if thinking of the right words to encapsulate the life and passions of a ghost, 'He had a brilliant mind, but he always made life difficult for himself. He liked to be on the move yet his hobby was watch repair, and he was a desperately fussy eater. He would say he had no allegiances but when he gave his loyalty he did so for life. He died for the freedom he believed in above all else.'

The smile had dropped from his mother's plump cheeks then and her eyes had seemed haunted. 'I still can't believe he's been dead almost five years,' she had whispered raising a be-ringed hand to her small mouth, 'He taunted death so many times I still, even now, even when I know it is over, I find myself half expecting him to stumble through my chamber doors.'

* * *

**Discoveries found in Old Paintings**

As far as Heios knew his father never did stumble through his mother's chamber doors, or any other, in the intervening years. He vaguely remembers that someone in northern Rozzaria, a pirate and a petty brigand, started calling himself 'Balthier' and causing all manner of mischief about three years ago. He remembers that the Rozzarian President, Al-Cid Margrace, reaching the end of his third and final term in office, had been most swift to expose the man as nothing more than an impostor.

Heios remembers that he was in Archades at the time the false Balthier was arrested and exposed. He had been visiting with the Emperor and Empress Solidor, and their children. Empress Penelo had specifically invited the thirteen year old Heios because he had expressed an interest in learning more about his father's homeland.

He remembers being puzzled by the Emperor, his own godfather Lord Larsa, when he made comment to the effect that it was ironic that this 'new' Balthier should be declared as an 'impostor' when the original 'Balthier' had been merely an alias for a son in hiding. Heios remembered that he had looked up then and spoken:

'Balthier was not my father's name?'

He remembers that the Empress, who always insisted that he call her "just Penelo" had lightly smacked her husband's arm and chided him for his insensitivity and the Emperor had looked quite chastened, surrounded by his four daughters and two sons (He would later have another son, the Empress having what amounted to a baby a year). It had been Grace, their oldest daughter, a sweet girl of eight years old with a mischievous sense of humour, who had squeezed his arm and whispered in his ear:

'Here in Archades they call your father 'the prodigal Bunansa'. He was born of the name Ffamran Mid Bunansa right here in the city.'

Ffamran Mid Bunansa. Later, during that very visit to the Archadian Capital, Grace and her brother Vayne, while on a chaperoned visit to the Archades National Portrait Gallery, had slipped with him away from their guard; Grace and Vayne had taken him down one long thickly carpeted gallery to the very end, wherein two portraits in an older style, hung side by side.

'See that?' Grace had pointed, eyes bright with mischief and her dark hair taut in pig tails, 'That's the Doctor Cidolfus Demen Bunansa: he's your father's father, but no one talks of _him _in the city because he was a very bad man. Your father and your mother and our mother killed him.'

There had been a certain ghoulish relish then in Grace's words, Heios still remembers, and in the glimmer in her eyes could almost be described as evil.

Heios had been shocked at the time. He had thought he knew all the details of the battle for liberation; that great battle for the throne his mother had fought years before he was born. Yet he had never heard of Cidolfus Demen Bunansa before.

'Is that why I am called Heios _Demen_?' he had asked, 'I am named after a bad man?'

The thought had been less than edifying.

Grace had merely shrugged in response and Vayne, a precocious six year old, had pointed out the other portrait. 'See that?' he had asked blue eyes very large, 'That's your father, as he was at fifteen: he looks like you.'

Heios had looked then at the sombre picture of a very grave young man standing stiffly in a full length portrait, dressed in the armour of an Archadian lower judge. The boy in the picture had Heios' own scowl upon his brow, his sharp blade of a nose and sharp chin. The portrait was unsmiling. The engraving upon the dark and empty background of the canvas carried the legend: _Ffamran Mid Bunansa, Judge of the Fifth, son of Cidolfus. _

'My father was a judge?' Heios had been in confusion. His mother and everyone at home had always told him his father was a sky pirate. Surely he could not have been both…..and what was this about father killing his own father?

Heios remembers that he had grown increasingly distressed staring up at those two pictures but eventually the three of them had been discovered by the Empress "just Penelo" herself. She had looked at Heios' pale face and swiftly sent off her two naughty children. The Empress (pregnant as always) had dropped down onto the carpeted floor of the gallery completely unself-conscious and had bid Heios sit beside her.

For a time she had simply sat with Heios as he stared transfixed by the picture of his father in an Archadian judge's armour. Then, in the simple manner of speech that made the Empress so very popular with the common people of the Empire, 'Just Penelo' had started to tell him the story of his father and his grandfather.

'He ran away, you see, when he was sixteen. He hated being a judge and Dr Cid, Balthier's father, he was….well, he was quite mad and a very bad man. Balthier, your father, he didn't want any part in something he thought was cruel and wrong. He ran away, changed his name, and became a sky pirate.'

'And then he killed his own father?' Heios had asked in shock. He had wondered just how bad Cidolfus, his grandfather, must have been that his own son had killed him.

Empress "just Penelo" had twisted her hands together in her lap, tapping her nails on her huge pregnant stomach in thought. 'When you are older, Ashe will tell you the whole story.' She had said carefully before turning to look at Heios very seriously.

'You have to understand, Dr Cid, what he did, helping Vayne Solidor – the first one I mean – it killed many, many thousands of people.' Penelo had sighed and looked down into her lap.

'I think Balthier wanted to save him, even after everything Dr Cid did, but Dr Cid, he wasn't going to let him. I think it hurt your father to watch Cid die…..I don't think he ever really got over it.'

Almost on the impulse of the moment Heios had then blurted out the question that had plagued him for years.

'Was my father a good man?'

Heios had turned back to stare up at the solemn boy in the old picture who stared down at him sadly from the many years ago, 'Did my father love my sister and I?'

'Oh Heios,' Empress "just Penelo" had wrapped an arm around him in an impulsive hug, 'Of course he loved the two of you. He used to let you read books your mother didn't want you reading: stories about exotic fiends and adventurers.' She had looked at him almost slyly, 'Almost every book in your library, and Hallie's, was bought new by your father when you were still in your cradles. He wanted the two of you to have all the answers to every question you might face without having to ask.'

Heios had thought then on his beautiful library that had been filled with gilt bound tomes for as long as Heios could remember. 'I did not know that. Mother has never said so.'

Empress "Just Penelo" had grinned, 'Ashe always said that he let you and your sister get away with all sorts of mayhem,' the Empress' smile had turned soft, 'He never once raised his voice, or had a cross word for either of you.'

Heios had sat back then and in a choked little voice made a very secret admission: 'I wish I had known my father. I wish he was still here now.'

Empress "just Penelo" had hugged him even more tightly and said quietly, 'We all do, Heios, we all do.'

* * *

**Seeking Peace in Old Relics**

At fourteen Heios was in Nalbina with his mother, his sister, and the rest of the royal household, on a progress of the kingdom territories of Dalmasca-Nabradia. It is rare for the royal family to stay in the keep of Nalbina. Their mother does not like to visit Nalbina keep; it was their father's home when he was not busy flying his Strahl or at the Palace with their mother.

Heios had always liked Nalbina. It was a much busier, noisier place than Rabanastre. There was always hustle and bustle and a tangible sense of purpose and industry in the air.

In Nalbina, when Heios was fourteen and on progress, the name Balthier was spoken with reverence by all the inventors, the entrepreneurs, and the mad dreamers that packed the city to the rafters, and still missed their patron: the queen's late husband who would put up the Gil for even the craziest of schemes, ventures, and inventions.

It was very early in the morning, on the day that he and his mother and sister were due to leave Nalbina for the new settlement of Nabudis, and Heios had found himself standing before the Strahl. He didn't remember how he came to be there, but once there he couldn't drag his eyes from the ship.

His _father's_ ship.

The Strahl had been permanently tethered in the Nalbina aerodrome since her recovery from the flood waters of Balfonheim almost ten years prior. The ship then, as it still is and ever will be, was kept in beautiful flight worthy condition by a dedicated troop of moogles. Even so, the Strahl had long been nothing more to the people of Dalmasca than a sombre memorial to a dead pirate.

It is, Heios had thought then, the only memorial or monument to his father that has ever been. Heios is not sure his father even warranted a state funeral and he has never seen a grave marker or found his father's name upon the Walk of Heroes. Not so much then that the pirate Balthier died, more like he never truly existed.

As he stared at the ship that day Heios had fancied that he could still see the deep scars in the metal hull. Scars from where the raging Mist fuelled flood waters that drowned the once infamous Balfonheim port, had crushed the Strahl as well.

Heios was still staring at the ship that day when the governor of Nalbina, the moogle Nono, had arrived trailed by his loyal attendant the Baknamy Bells and Whistles.

'Master Heios,' Nono had stopped then in surprise to see him and bowed to him low, his pom-pom plume bobbing. Heios had smiled. Nono had never called either he or Hallie by title but instead as Master Heios and Mistress Hallie. In that way they were honoured not as the heirs to the Dalmascan throne but as the children of Nono's much lamented captain, Balthier.

'Hello Nono.' Heios' eyes had gone back to the Strahl almost against his will. 'What brings you out so early?' he had asked the governor of Nalbina, master of Dalmasca's second greatest city. Heios had wondered then if his mother had bequeathed the title on Nono because it was what his father would have wanted. Heios had heard it said before that day, that Nalbina would not have recovered after the war had it not been for the dedicated patronage of the pirate Balthier.

Nono had looked at him almost quizzically in response to his polite inquiry. 'Kupo, I always come and do the maintenance checks on the Strahl at this time.' Nono had blinked his deep obsidian eyes up at Heios. 'Master Balthier always used to get up with the sun. Often we would run the checks together, kupo.'

'But the Strahl will never fly again,' Heios had said then, confusion making him almost rude, 'And my father is dead.'

'Kupo-po,' the moogle had stepped back then in complete affront, 'Master Heios! Do not say such things.'

Heios had stared at the moogle then; it had seemed to Heios that the moogle's eyes had been suddenly wet. Quietly the Baknamy Bells and Whistles had passed Nono a handkerchief.

'But it's true.' Heios had stuttered utterly perplexed.

'Kupo,' the moogle had said almost petulantly, 'Master Balthier is gone on now, I cannot deny, but for his own son to claim the Strahl will not fly again,' the moogle had shaken his head vigorously enough to send his pom-pom to lash from side to side, 'Kupo-po! Travesty: sacrilege!'

The governor of Nalbina, and the pirate Balthier's most loving aide, had looked out at the Strahl, wrench in hand, on that morning with a look of grim determination on his small, furred face.

'She will fly again,' Nono had said as Nalbina began to rise to life around them, 'Kupo-po, Master Balthier will be able to go to his rest easy, when he sees his ship in flight once again.'

Heios had been staggered and aghast, 'You do not think my father is at rest?'

Nono had turned sad and endless eyes away from the shackled Strahl, and up to Heios once more then, and he had shaken his fluffy white head slowly and certainly.

'How can my master rest easy, kupo? How can my master rest when all he was is forgotten?'

* * *

**Looking for the Pirate in the Woods**

By the time Heios reached his fifteenth year the situation was growing desperate. Heios was convinced that his mother winced every time she looked at him, seeing not her son, but his father's ghost. The comments behind the hands grew louder, and although he tried not to listen, he still heard every word that people said.

'The young prince is always talking about going to foreign parts; he has pirate in his blood, no doubt. He'll not sit still on a throne that's for sure.'

'I remember the master Balthier, the prince is his very image: they can both command a room to silence just by walking in the door.'

'Her Majesty's heart must ache, the prince is so like his father; I've always said that must be torture: losing a husband as she did and then having to see his shadow in her son. I just hope the prince does not share his father's ill-starred fate.'

On a visit to Landis Heios had slipped his royal guard and 'borrowed' an air skimmer from the Landis aerodrome to go and visit his god father Basch and Fran in the thickly forested Salomna region of Landis. Arriving without invitation he had found himself face to face with the Viera while she stood by a rock pool in the centre of a copse of silver birch trees. Dressed in white the Viera was an almost ethereal figure; tall and dark but clad in light.

'Fran,' Heios had nodded deeply to the Viera as he might to his own lady mother the Queen of Dalmasca. Fran, although she visited Dalmasca rarely, had always been part of the fabric of he and his sister's lives. Breathless and red checked with his distress Heios had been unable to find the words for his many questions.

Fran had stepped away from the rock pool and moved forward to lay a hand against his cheek. It seemed to Heios that she smiled at him and he found himself wondering traitorously if she thought she smiled at his father.

'No,' Fran had spoken, 'He is not you, and you are not he. I know this, as does your mother. Listen not to the words of strangers, for they are but chattering geese on unkind gales.'

Heios had not been surprised at the time to discover that Fran had known exactly what brought him hurrying to her with the questions he couldn't repress any longer. He had imagined that the wind in the trees told her as she walked through her wood.

'But I look so like him,' Heios had said, 'Everyday someone says it is so.'

'You are of his blood, is that so strange?' Fran had bid him sit upon the smooth stone of a rock facing the pool and she had sat herself down beside him.

'I know all about the Nethicite, Dr Cid, Nabudis, and the Occuria who caused the deaths of both my father and my grandfather.'

Heios had blurted out this great secret in a rush, words tumbling like pebbles into the depths of the rock pool. 'I know the secrets of my father's deeds aboard Bahamut. I know that he foiled an assassination attempt on Emperor Larsa and rescued the former president Al-Cid Margrace from Rozzaria when his brother tried to kill him. I have even found evidence of my father's crimes when you and he were pirates.'

It had not been easy going behind the backs of all those who would keep the secrets from him, but Heios had finally found some of his answers. He had begun to build a picture of his father up within his mind, but he had found then, that the pieces of the picture did not make a good fit. The fifteen year old Heios had found himself with more questions than he had answers even after all his hard work.

Fran, on that day by the rock pool, had merely nodded calmly in the face of his revelation.

'You know the facts but lack the moral of the story, yes?' She had murmured in her strangely flat yet musical voice. 'Your father is but a caricature upon history's pages; you know his deeds but not his heart.' Fran had shaken her head, almost sorrowfully, 'A sad fate for the leading man; a sad fate for his child.'

Heios had nodded feeling heat behind his eyes that he would never let fall as tears. Heios was not a child given to tears and he never had been.

'Fran, my father was he….?'

Fran had shaken her head again then, interrupting him, and letting falls of softly curling white hair tumble behind her back.

'Answers I cannot give you,' she told him before he could finish asking, 'It is not in my power to tell you who your father was.' She had looked at him with her ageless eyes.

'Of he that was my partner in the sky, I may speak, of he who was father to his children, I cannot.'

Heios had tried to puzzle this out, 'Why? Fran if not you then who?' he had asked desperately, 'If you, who was to my father his closest friend and confidante, cannot tell me what manner of man my father was then who can?'

It was at that moment that another man had cleared his throat and Heios had leapt from his perch beside the still and serene Fran to see that Basch, silver gleaming to twine with his golden mane, had returned from his fishing expedition alongside his daughter Leda.

Leda, her pale white and black tipped ears, so like her mother's, flicking back and forth as she had looked solemnly from Heios to her mother had trotted, fleet of foot, to her mother's side without uttering a word.

'Your highness,' Basch had greeted him with faultless courtesy and Heios had rolled his eyes in irritation, 'Basch please, you of all people do not need to call me that.'

The former knight and former Judge Magister turned simple farmer had smiled faintly and nodded his head, stepping forward into the small glen, 'As you say, young master.' He had looked at Heios keenly as he asked his habitual question, 'How is her Highness your lady mother, and your sister the princess Halina?'

Heios had smiled then thinly trying to constrain his impatience, 'They are well, thank you, and you sir?'

Leda had by that time jumped up onto the rock beside her mother and was now whispering into her mother's tall ears, Fran's head dipped attentively down as she listened. Basch had watched the two with a gentle smile on his face.

'Aye, I am well.' He had said simply eyes never leaving the sight of his small family, 'I have all that I could need and more.'

Heios remembers that he had wondered at the time, if his father had ever watched he and Hallie with their mother and thought the same himself? Had his father, the pirate, looked at his family and considered himself blessed – or perhaps cursed?

The rest of his impromptu visit had been both pleasure and torment for Heios on that day. He had seethed with questions but it had seemed that no one was either able, or prepared, to answer them.

Finally when his royal guard and the Landia aerodrome security had caught up with and he was preparing to leave the Fon Ronsenberg farm little Leda had approached him, tugging on his sleeve.

'Mother told me to tell you,' she had begun simply, her pale, pale golden hair falling in a smooth sheet to her waist, 'that she smiles at you not for his memory, he that is now one with the sky, but because in you my mother knows that he that was her heart's dear companion before my father, is at peace.'

Leda, her mother's emissary, had looked into Heios' eyes very intently as she spoke the last of the message. 'You are the peace the pirate Balthier lacked in life; your freedom from his strife is his salvation.'

* * *

**Releasing the Legend**

In the present, before his mirror glass, the sixteen year old prince Heios turns from his father, his ghost, in the mirror to fish out the item he stole from the locked room in the Nalbina tower.

He remembers the room filled with rifles with their triggers all removed, and dozens of clocks, the hands frozen, and their time halted forever. The tower room was his father's, and the room his lady mother declared be closed off ever more upon his father's death. From that room Heios had stolen many small trinkets, but he reaches for just one now: a simple brocade vest.

Heios has some trouble with the complicated ties and clasps at the back of the garment but he eventually manages to have it securely fastened over his simple white shirt.

'Well father, what do you think?' he asks his reflection turning back to the mirror, 'Would I make a good pirate?'

He thinks for a moment that he sees his father's ghost smile at him, but then he reasons logically that it is only his own smile he sees in the mirror glass. Heios runs his hands over the intricate patterning on the stiff treated leather of the vest. No wonder his father was always praised for good posture, this damned vest is tighter than a lady's corset (or so Heios imagines).

The door to his bed chamber bangs open so abruptly Heios has his dagger drawn to defend himself before his eyes recognise the identity of his intruder. Hallie stands in the threshold of the room staring at him, hands on hips.

'I can't believe you are really going to do this.' She stares at him, stares at the stolen vest, the pure white shirt and the patterned leather trousers he wears. Heios does not know what to say. He loves his twin sister but he has never shared his father, his ghost, with her before. Now Hallie stares at him and grows pale.

'You will upset mother.' She tells him and Heios feels himself shrug coolly, as he roots about for the long needle, the disinfectant ointment, and the candle he has gathered in preparation.

'I upset mother everyday I grow older wearing this face,' he replies flippantly lighting the candle and eyeing the needle nervously. 'If I'm going to be forever labelled a ghost I may as well play the part fully – at least for one day.'

Hallie stamped her foot on the floor of his chamber, 'Do not be flippant Heios. This charade is cruel.'

Heios holds the holds her needle in the candle flame, the heat licking at the tips of his fingers, 'Oh yes,' he agrees with almost cheerful malice, 'I agree, sister.'

His eyes are narrowed and his lips curled into a sharp smirk that is very unlike him, 'This charade of silence, this pretence that we have no father to speak of publically or privately is cruel indeed. Our father died to protect us and we cannot even bring ourselves to speak his name?'

Hallie stares at him for the longest moment. She chews on her lip as Heios fumbles the hot needle, drops it, curses, and drops onto his knees to retrieve it and start the process all over again. After a moment his sister seems to come to some sort of decision. She stamps her foot once more and then moves forward.

'Oh for goodness sake, here let me do it.' She snatches the needle from him and holds it competently in the flame. 'Go sit on the side of the bed.' She commands sharply.

Heios eyes his sister warily as she approaches him with the red hot needle. He braces himself and it does indeed hurt as she drives the needle through the soft flesh of his earlobe. As soon as she releases him he jumps up off the bed with a curse, clapping a hand to his ear. Hallie smirks at him.

'Big baby; you're hardly going to follow in father's footsteps if you can't even stand a pierced ear,' she gloats. 'Father had six piercings: three in each ear.'

'I know,' Heios mutters mulishly (as if there is any fact, no matter how trivial, he does not know about his father now) 'But I should imagine father had a much more competent person to assist him than I.'

Hallie is cleaning the needle ready to do his other ear. She narrows her eyes dangerously at him, 'I could just leave and let you do this yourself. Or better yet, I could run and tell mother what you're planning.'

Heios narrows his own eyes, the two siblings settling in for a glaring contest like they used to have as children, 'You wouldn't.'

Hallie considers, dropping her eyes first and staring at the needle, 'I should. I think I really should.'

Heios watches her, 'You don't want to though, right sister?' he sits back down on the edge of the bed and lets his sister drive the hot metal through his other ear; biting his tongue against the sharp pain. 'Admit it,' he adds almost cajolingly, 'Despite what you say, you miss our father too.'

Hallie releases a sharp breath of irritation, 'Heios I don't even remember him.' She glares at him as she hands over the twin twists of burnished silver for insertion into his ears, 'Anymore than _you_ do.' She flaps her hands at his attire, 'All this is just make believe and dress up: when all is said and done it won't bring our father back.'

Heios is quiet for a moment and almost involuntarily he glances at the solemn faced man in the flamboyant clothes with the heavy silver ear-rings hanging from his red and throbbing ears that he sees in the mirror.

'No,' he says quietly, 'I think you're wrong sister. I think,' he licks his lips as he prepares to finally speak his mind, 'I think that nothing can ever give to us the father who died when we were too young to remember, but I think….I think I can bring back the man who was our mother's lover, Fran's partner, Nono's master. I think for just a day I can give Ivalice back her leading man.'

Hallie's bottom lip trembles and her cheeks flush before she quickly controls it, 'Heios….'

She does not finish and instead stares down at the floor, 'Heios even if you are right, it doesn't change anything. You can wear his clothes forever and a day but our father will still be dead.' Her eyes beseech him to understand, 'You can't know a man by wearing his shirt.'

Heios stares into the reflection in the mirror and he thinks he sees the ghost who has quietly haunted him for years nod his head just slightly in agreement with his sister's words. He senses that his father would not want for Heios to try and live his life for him at the detriment of his own. He sighs.

'I know that Hallie; truly I do. No matter what this looks like,' he raises his own hands and tugs at his loose white sleeves, 'I know that you are right.' He turns to meet his sister's sad eyes, 'but don't you see sister? For the last twelve years our father has been a ghost hidden in muffled conversation and veiled glances we are not allowed to know about.'

Heios leapt to his feet and paced a tight circle in the room, absent-mindedly tugging at the cuff of his right sleeve. 'The only people who speak of Balthier are those who never knew him; the Strahl is abandoned in an aerodrome hangar, left to gather dust and spiders, and that is wrong sister. It is wrong.'

'Heios, brother; what has gotten into you?'

Hallie has rarely seen her calm, collected brother so over-wrought. Her own heart starts to pound with a strange mixture of sympathetic excitement. Heios' eyes were intense and dark and filled with a wild energy when he turned back to Hallie.

'Just for one day, sister, as a citizen of the country he gave his life for, let alone his child, I want to celebrate our father's _life_.' Heios stared into his sister's eyes, willing his twin to understand. He swallowed hard and spoke the hard and inescapable truth.

'Tomorrow and the next day, and every year of our lives after today, our father will still be dead. We will never know what he would have made of us, we will never talk to him; we'll never know who he truly was.'

Heios slapped a hand over his brocade covered chest, 'But by the gods, I won't let those who _do_ remember forget him. I will not let his spirit go forgotten. Our father deserves better than that.'

There was a long silence, in which time Hallie gnawed on her bottom lip and then, abruptly, almost violently, she lunged forward and yanked another of Heios secret cotton shirts out of his armoire before yanking it roughly over her head. Eyes bright and fierce with tears and excitement Hallie smoothed out her fly-away hair and turned to her brother.

'I shall need a vest of my own and some more of father's jewellery.' She tilted her chin up proud and arrogant as any roguish privateer, 'I am a pirate's daughter too,' she told him imperiously, 'and I'm not letting _you_ have all the glory.'

Heios grinned and immediately pulled the spare vest and ear rings from their hiding spots (he had hoped his sister would be with him in this venture and prepared accordingly).

Thus it is that before the dawn has fully risen on the twins sixteenth birthday, the two royal children of the Dynast line abscond from the Rabanastre palace and their own coming of age celebrations to make haste for Nalbina.

* * *

**To the Victor go the Spoils: When Our Wars Are Won What Then?**

Her Royal Highness the Dynast Queen Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca is sitting on her balcony with a cup of herbal tea when the two heirs to the throne dash by across the royal gardens. She sees Hallie, smothered in an ill-fitting brocade vest and a white shirt too big for her, gainfully keeping stride with her leaner, taller brother. For a moment her heart catches as she sees Heios turn around to grin at his sister.

For just a moment it is not her son she sees, but another.

Ashe watches her children as they make a poor show of stealth and she sighs. She will have to give them both lessons on slipping away from the palace unseen and unheard after all this is said and done. One never knows when it might come in useful.

The gods only know that Ashe has made sure that the children are well versed in melee combat and the use of firearms, after all. She has made sure they can both pilot an airship in an air dogfight, and that they both understand the finer points of diplomacy (namely when it is appropriate to be diplomatic while wielding edged weapons).

She has tried to ensure that her children will be prepared for all eventualities - and she has been waiting for this day for many months.

Ashe looks down at the brightly coloured (but undoubtedly garish) rings on her fingers. One is pink and blue and the other yellow and green; she used to wear them on her thumbs because they were too big for her fingers – now her fingers are plump enough for them and her thumbs are too fat.

At forty years of age Ashe is of matronly proportions. A decade of safety and prosperity in Dalmasca and the presence of men she can trust in her council and her guard have allowed Ashe the reward of growing dumpy and indolent in her later years. Her battles are all fought and won; her losses in her past. Now she can think on abdication in favour of one or both of her children and the prospect of living out the rest of her days in peaceful leisure while waiting for bushel bundles of grandchildren to dote on.

Ashe twiddles one of the rings on her fingers; it is the ring Larsa handed to her all those years ago. The one _he _had pried from his finger before he died. Sometimes she imagines that when she dies he will be waiting for her, and sometimes he is even joined by Rasler, and that the two men she has loved and lost will greet her in eternity by promptly demanding the return of their rings.

When she thinks this, Ashe smiles; she has so many dead loved ones now that she often thinks of an after life in which Rasler is a good and just king and Balthier is free to roam eternity as he wills. It is a fantasy that has allowed her to still take joy in the life she has. She couldn't do so if she honestly believed that men like Balthier can truly cease to be forever.

Ashe has known for months that Heios would do as he has – she hadn't been sure if Hallie would follow, but she is now glad to see that the twins are going to commit a crime of theft together; that sort of thing should be kept in the family.

Ashe raises one of her small, plump, hands in the air and admires it; instead of being alarmed when her finger became to wide for her to wear her first wedding band and that of Rasler on her hand, Ashe had laughed and simply taken to wearing the rings on a chain around her neck. The life she had led since she was widowed, orphaned, and falsely declared dead at seventeen is not one that ever promised the opportunity to grow old, fat, and grey haired. Ashe therefore considers every grey hair threading through her scalp and every laughter line around her eyes a reward for the trials of her youth.

She is growing old in peace when too many people she has loved and lost are not.

Ashe has sent word, discreetly, ahead to Nalbina and to the guard stationed around the palace and the Barheim passage; they will watch for her children but they will not stop them.

After twelve years, Ashe thinks with satisfaction, the Strahl will fly again.

Ashe leans back in her chair upon her white rose strewn balcony; she looks up at the dawn burnished sky. She smiles at the birds just rousing. She thinks that the pirate would be pleased with these events.

Ashe strokes her hand over the two rings on her other hand as it rests calmly in her lap. She misses him still, but she does not mourn him. The leading man never dies: his children will guarantee it.

Ashe closes her eyes as the sun rises, warm and caressing, to fall upon the balcony. A single tear strokes down her cheek but she is smiling all the same. This is her legacy, her reward for two dead husbands and so many lost comrades. She may cry, but at least _now_ she can smile as she does so.

* * *

**Finding Laughter in the Winds**

There are two people waiting for the twins when they arrive in the Nalbina aerodrome. Nono, wrench swinging in his hand, nods to the children in perfunctory fashion.

'Master Heios, Mistress Hallie: kupo. The Strahl is ready for launch.'

The Moogle is calm; he always knew this day would come. He simply could not believe that the son and daughter of master Balthier could be born without wings. He knew that one, or both, would come for the Strahl one day.

With one last nod to the other occupant of the aerodrome the moogle leaves. He is satisfied that he has done his duty for the Strahl and her departed captain; he is satisfied that master Balthier will be easy in his rest now.

Nono thinks as he toddles off, that maybe he too, will be easy in his rest now.

The Strahl will fly as she aught do, and master Balthier is not forgotten.

Once the Moogle is gone the two hume Dynast heirs turn to face the Viera Leda. She is only ten years old but she is tall as Heios already and looks older than her years. She regards the two humes with calm pale pinkish eyes. Her face is a perfect copy of her mother's even if her hair is threaded with her father's sunlight gold.

'On yester-eve, my mother was walking in the grove,' Leda explains in her musical voice touched with the earthen tones of her father's homeland, 'the soft summer breeze that plays about her hair and dances in the boughs, came upon my mother. The breeze spoke with voice that my mother has ne'er heard in long years: the wind told her that the Strahl would fly upon the morrow.'

Heios and Hallie exchanged a look. Generally speaking it did not surprise them that Fran would know this, as Fran was generally expected to know everything about everything by the twins. It was Hallie who asked the question:

'It is always good to see you, Leda, but why are you here and Fran is not?'

Leda actually smiled; her father's smile. 'My mother's wings were lost when her partner took to skies unending without her. She will ne'er fly again.' Leda shook her head, 'but the sky is part of my heritage too. She bid me fly with you.'

'Oh,' Heios grinned, 'That's alright then.' He clapped his hands together, 'Let's be off.'

Hallie rolled her eyes at him but Leda awarded him with another of those flashing grins, 'My mother also bid me tell you that you will have fair winds from here to the Viera forests of Balfonheim and back again. She says that your father is laughing and the skies are smiling.'

'Oh I know,' Heios replied blithely even as his sister blinked swiftly to obliterate tears, 'The smile is right here on my face.' He said.

* * *

**A Prodigious Return and Ghosts and Legends to their Rest do go**

Empress Penelo was knitting. It was a hobby she had only taken up since living in Archades where it snowed in winter fairly often. She generally limited herself to knitting very brightly coloured scarves because she couldn't knit very competently and a scarf at least was very simple. For this reason her husband and her children had a great many scarves. It had become a family joke that all visiting dignitaries were gifted with a hand knitted by the Empress scarf whether they wanted one or not; in fact if they came often they might have several Empress knitted scarves. It was practically an industry of one, Penelo and her knitting.

So it was that Penelo sat knitting while Larsa sat opposite her in their private chambers ostensibly reading, but was in fact, staring in slightly aghast awe at the six feet long bright orange and green woollen scarf Penelo was industriously adding to with each click of her knitting needles.

Larsa wondered if he should suggest, politely, to his adored wife that perhaps the scarf was finished, but then again, perhaps he shouldn't. Penelo was sometimes a little self-conscious about her knitting.

Therefore it was a relief when a messenger in the black and red livery of the Solidor household was admitted into the suite and proceeded to pass on his message. The Strahl, he said, was in flight once more and headed for the capital.

Penelo's knitting needles stopped in mid motion. She smiled as Larsa dismissed the messenger. 'I'll go and wake the children.' She dropped her knitting and her bushel of yarn and went to the adjoining suites where the children were housed.

Larsa walked out onto the wide balcony and into the sonorous night air. The sounds of the city rose up from deep below the rise of the Imperial residence. Larsa could see the night silenced spindly hulks of the cranes and other large equipment being used to clear the Old Archades slums and build the new housing; housing that would no longer confine any of his people to poverty and squalor. Very distantly he thought he could hear the cries and calls of the street ears and the ardents chasing chops; the faint refrains of an aria from the opera house in Tsenoble. He smiled at his city; smiled at the changing face of his empire.

The children ranging in age from two to eleven arrived then herded by their mother onto the balcony. Larsa picked up his youngest child, his son, Solas, and stroked a hand over his fine golden hair, which looked white in the darkness. His eldest child, Grace, nudged her head against his arm and bustled closer while young Vayne came up on his other side.

'What's happening lord father?' Vayne asked keenly, eyes sweeping the night sky for any likely disturbance or event interest, 'Why have you woken us? Is there some danger?'

Penelo laughed. Her arms full of their five year old son Tannolo, named for Penelo's own father. 'Oh hush you, there's no danger. You are always looking for trouble Vayne.' She chided gently.

'They're children; children are always looking for trouble.' Larsa pointed out mildly, secretly thankful that his son Vayne had little in common temperamentally with his name sake, Larsa's late brother.

Penelo snorted her eyes glittery with humour, 'Oh they're children _now_,' she agreed, 'but you wait, in a year Grace will be off on her own, seeking out old enemies to make peace with and trying to right all manner of social injustices.' Penelo grinned, 'Just like her father.'

'Well,' Larsa shifted his youngest son a little so he could make a show of buffing the nails of his free hand, 'One does not like to brag,' he murmured, 'But I like to think I have set an example worthy of following.'

Penelo might have said something in rejoinder at that point but she was cut off by Daisy-Diana, their three year old daughter, 'Oooooohhh, look, father, mother, do you see the pretty ship?'

Daisy-Di, Lorelei and Jemima, the three younger daughters, were all precariously balanced on an over turned earthenware pot so they could just see over the balcony rail and each of the children began pointing and cooing as an airship, emblazoned with swirls of pink and orange and blue, was granted entry through the personal Imperial palace paling to hover just twenty feet from the balcony.

'That's…' Vayne scrunched his brow trying to identify the ship, but it was Grace who beat him to the punch. She gasped and grabbed her father's velvet sleeve:

'Father that is the Strahl!'

As Grace was speaking the airship did an about face so that it was possible to see into the cabin at the two grinning Dynast heirs, in their brocade vests, ear-rings and white sleeves, alongside the slight and elegant Viera, waving from within. Larsa and Penelo both laughed to see the twins dressed like their father, and the Solidor family devoted themselves to at least three full minutes of enthusiastic waving before the Strahl turned to make her exit.

As the children called goodbyes and chattered excitedly to one another Penelo handed over Tannolo to his older siblings care and Larsa handed over Solas to Grace so that he could slip his arm around his wife, who was sniffling slightly. Penelo put her head against his shoulder and sniffed a bit more loudly.

'I never thought I'd see the Strahl in flight again,' she half laughed and half-sobbed. 'Vaan did a good job teaching Heios to fly her.' Penelo wiped a hand over her eyes flicking away tears. 'Balthier would be proud.'

Larsa smiled watching the Strahl leave Archades air space as smoothly as she had entered. His mind drifted back to the moment, over a decade ago, that he had watched the sky pirate Balthier die in the chambers of the Occuria deep in the cold heart of Giruvegan. He closed his eyes as memory rose.

'_It is over now,' Balthier's voice was more Phantom than reality, 'It is time to fly away from this place. I can hear the sky calling me.'_

_Before Larsa's eyes Balthier raised his arms slightly out from his body and tilted his head back as if basking in some unseen light. For just a moment Larsa thought he saw the ghost of the old sly smile bright and unrepentant, appear despite the tracks of tears that seemed to glow across his shimmering cheeks. Larsa watched and Balthier faded; there were no last words, no apologies, just a time weary smile that faded last of all._

_In the end, against all expectations to the contrary, the greatest of all the sky pirates, the infamous Balthier, did not die with a bang or a whimper, but instead went silent and peaceful as a little lamb into legend. _

'Silent and peaceful into legend,' Larsa laughed at his own reflections, 'I suppose it is true, a good man does not die.' The Emperor of Archadia kissed his Dalmascan wife on the temple, 'At least not so long as he is remembered by those that love him.'

*****

And so it was from the great new forests of the Viera in Balfonheim and Cerobi, to the town of Atholl where the magickal sheep grazed, to the small holding farm in Landis where a Viera stood under the canopy of her Wood and listened to the song of the wind, that a man who had passed into legend lived once again in the joy of his children, the love of his widow, and the memories of his friends.

Thus the Strahl flew through that long magical night and onwards into a new horizon while at her back, history in the hands of man, found its peace.


End file.
